What domain registrar has the best web interface for buying a domain?

[yllus]

Hey guys and girls,

I was just wondering as to your opinions on who has the best website interface when it comes to purchasing a domain name.

Are there any features/functionality you wish were present on your favourite domain registrar's website (eg. NameCheap, GoDaddy)? Anything you absolutely hate?

As you might guess, I'm involved in a redesign of our domain name registration interface - so I thought I might try to gather some user opinions. Please let me know what you think.

 

[effowe]

Couldn't tell you who has the best, but I use NameCheap. They have good prices and I love the free whois protection so that's the one for me.

 

[amdskip]

Originally posted by: effowe
Couldn't tell you who has the best, but I use NameCheap. They have good prices and I love the free whois protection so that's the one for me.

Same here, I used godaddy once and have used namecheap after that. Just have a basic straight forward form and you should be good.

 

[AgaBoogaBoo]

Namecheap, no question at all. I've probably gone through over a hundred domains with them.

 

[Aluvus]

Once upon a time, RegisterFly had a really good interface for registering multiple domains at once. Mostly, they had it on the same page as the "register 1 domain at a time" page, so you didn't have to go and seek it out. They also didn't spam you with a bunch of "are you sure you don't want 'yourdomainVIAGRA-TEEN-TUBE-WORK-FROM-HOME.com'?" garbage. IIRC, they did suggest other TLDs (which is good), just not bizarre, idiotic variants on the names you actually wanted (which is annoying).

Then a bunch of bad things happened to them, and now I have a domain registered with eNom. But I digress.

GoDaddy's interface won't let you complete a purchase with Opera, which they "cannot replicate" (funny, I replicated it several times). This is enough to motivate me to change registrars in the near future. GoDaddy's interface is also cram-packed with efforts to sell you crap you don't want, pictures of some athlete chick (maybe she has a Web empire on the side, I dunno), and other visual noise that serves no good purpose. Their navigation menus have way too many items, many of which are crap. Don't be like them.

GoDaddy and RegisterFly (after it went to hell) both make a big effort to sell you all kinds of services (hosting, SSL certs, etc. etc.) both during and after the purchase. GoDaddy even does fun things like throwing variants of your domain at you (on a page with a big red heading) with a giant, colorful button to add them to your order and a smaller link to not add them. Even better, if you uncheck those items and click the big button, you are told that you must click the smaller link, because you didn't choose any "offers". Idiocy.

Summary:

Don't try to sell me a bunch of crap I don't want. Don't overwhelm me with visual noise. If you must use Javascript (and think carefully about this), hire someone competent to do it.

Bonus fact: GoDaddy is convinced I might want to spend $300 to buy "Top10Earthquakes.com". I really, sincerely do not.

 

[FoBoT]

i use dotster.com
i only have 5 domains, so i am not really on the site/using the interface very often

but it works just fine

 

[TechAZ]

Originally posted by: Aluvus
Once upon a time, RegisterFly had a really good interface for registering multiple domains at once. Mostly, they had it on the same page as the "register 1 domain at a time" page, so you didn't have to go and seek it out. They also didn't spam you with a bunch of "are you sure you don't want 'yourdomainVIAGRA-TEEN-TUBE-WORK-FROM-HOME.com'?" garbage. IIRC, they did suggest other TLDs (which is good), just not bizarre, idiotic variants on the names you actually wanted (which is annoying).

Then a bunch of bad things happened to them, and now I have a domain registered with eNom. But I digress.

GoDaddy's interface won't let you complete a purchase with Opera, which they "cannot replicate" (funny, I replicated it several times). This is enough to motivate me to change registrars in the near future. GoDaddy's interface is also cram-packed with efforts to sell you crap you don't want, pictures of some athlete chick (maybe she has a Web empire on the side, I dunno), and other visual noise that serves no good purpose. Their navigation menus have way too many items, many of which are crap. Don't be like them.

GoDaddy and RegisterFly (after it went to hell) both make a big effort to sell you all kinds of services (hosting, SSL certs, etc. etc.) both during and after the purchase. GoDaddy even does fun things like throwing variants of your domain at you (on a page with a big red heading) with a giant, colorful button to add them to your order and a smaller link to not add them. Even better, if you uncheck those items and click the big button, you are told that you must click the smaller link, because you didn't choose any "offers". Idiocy.

Summary:

Don't try to sell me a bunch of crap I don't want. Don't overwhelm me with visual noise. If you must use Javascript (and think carefully about this), hire someone competent to do it.

Bonus fact: GoDaddy is convinced I might want to spend $300 to buy "Top10Earthquakes.com". I really, sincerely do not.

1st, that's Danica Patrick, and she's hot. 2nd, you might not want/need things that the interface throws at you, but the real money givers (businesses) like to know their options. It's not exactly brain surgery clicking "no thanks, continue" and evaluating your purchase at the checkout.

Namecheap's interface is alright, I have yet to come across a site that's really slick and clean.

Network Solutions interface is probably the best I've seen....however they will fuck you for every penny you have compared to any other place.

 

[RossMAN]

NameCheap.com > *

 

[SmoochyTX]

All I can definitely tell you is do NOT use GoDaddy and try to transfer later. Bastards!

 

[RossMAN]

Originally posted by: SmoochyTX
All I can definitely tell you is do NOT use GoDaddy and try to transfer later. Bastards!

I recently bought around $1,000 in domains and am going through that process right now.

It's taken around 10 days for a few domains to fully transfer from GoDaddy.com to NameCheap.com

 

[TwiceOver]

Hrm, looks like I will be moving away from Godaddy.

Still find it funny when I get invoices in at my new job where they have been paying $50+ on their multiple domain registrations. I think I'll try namecheap and move my domains there in the future.

 

[Aluvus]

Originally posted by: TechAZ

1st, that's Danica Patrick, and she's hot.

It's currently Amanda Beard, and no, a 70-pixel image of her is not especially hot. And has literally nothing to do with registering a domain.

If you want to see pictures of her, go pick up the issue of Sports Illustrated's swimsuit edition that she was apparently in. Wikipedia says she was even nude in Playboy, which is something of a step up from "tiny picture on a random website". In fact there are much hotter, higher-quality images of her available in Google Image Search's thumbnails.

Here's a really simple test to determine if shoving her picture on top of every page is a good idea: When you go to Network Solutions' site, is your first reaction that it is missing something because there is not a picture of some random female athlete on it? What about Dotster? No? There you go.

2nd, you might not want/need things that the interface throws at you, but the real money givers (businesses) like to know their options. It's not exactly brain surgery clicking "no thanks, continue" and evaluating your purchase at the checkout.

Buying things is an opt-in process, not an opt-out process. If I wanted ZOMBIE-PARIS-HILTON-VIAGRA.COM, I would've put it in my damn shopping cart. There is a very important line between "suggesting other things the customer reasonably might want" and "bombarding the customer with every goddamn service you offer". Suggesting someone might want the same name with a different, popular TLD (.name does not count) is smart. Suggesting they might want some completely unrelated domain that inexplicably costs $1,000 is stupid.

And since we both brought up Network Solutions, let's take a moment to compare front-page interfaces. NS's "Domain Names" menu contains 9 items, most of which are obviously related and make sense in that menu. GoDaddy's analogous "Domains" menu contains 20 items, some of which are obviously misplaced ("domain buy service", which has an incredibly vague name, actually belongs next to backordered domains and such), and some of which are redundant (all the items about auctions are redundant with the separate "domain auctions" menu).

I understand the "billion items per page" mentality; it's exactly the same ethos used in grocery stores. And studies in grocery stores show that when customers are exposed to more items, they buy more items. But they also ignore more items, and it is harder for them to find the items they know they want. If you can actually implement a jam-packed interface well (Amazon.com is the canonical example), it works. If you can't, then you are GoDaddy.