Offering Domains Can Reduce Friction & Provide a Seamless User Experience

The domain market has grown significantly over the last decade, and the trend is not slowing down. Experts predict the market will reach $1,025 million within the next 2 – 3 years. Businesses can tap into this growth by seamlessly integrating domain reselling into service offerings. 

Getting started with domain reselling isn’t as challenging as one may think. In this whitepaper, you’ll learn how this offering can be integrated into a platform via a simple, user-friendly, no-code, low-code, or customizable API option. You’ll also learn how your platform can utilize domain reselling to improve UX, increase revenue, and establish yourself as a leading SaaS platform. 

How integrated domain reselling reduces friction 

Establishing an optimized customer journey is essential to the success of a SaaS platform. This means removing any point of friction in your product flow, especially anything that requires users to integrate a third-party product with your service. 

SaaS platforms offering products and services that require a domain name to activate can provide a more seamless user experience by integrating domain reselling directly into your platform. Competitive advantages of integrating domain reselling include:

1. Improved customer experience: Integrating domain sales into your platform helps simplify the web publication process for customers. It also reduced the technical know-how needed for the customers to launch an online business on the platform.
2. Convert from freemium to paying: Your platform can leverage custom domains as a premium feature to encourage paid conversions. This is because of the plethora of benefits it provides for the customer, including a more professional website and memorable domain name. Overall, by including custom domains in your product suite, you can entice customers to buy into a paid subscription.
3. Free up customer support: Streamlining the domain linking process can reduce the number of support tickets received. This is because customers do not have to navigate the complexities of connecting a third-party domain name, and come to your support team with questions. When the customer buys a domain name directly from the platform, they can automate the domain linking process for the customer, so they don’t have to connect the domain name themselves. As a result, customer support team efforts can be allocated toward other priorities, freeing up the team’s time, energy, and resources. 

Help customers find the right domains

Choosing a domain name isn’t just about picking a URL – it’s about securing the right domain name, ideally one that reflects what a brand or company stands for. The latest research estimates there are 1.88 billion live websites today – the competition to stand out is fierce. Your customers want their offerings to be communicated through their domain. 

That’s why descriptive domains like .CAFE and .STUDIO are so relevant in today’s digital landscape: they help potential visitors understand exactly what to expect when they visit a site, and the domain name can be much more memorable.

Powerful top-level domains (TLDs) can range from industry-specific extensions (like .TECHNOLOGY, .BIO or .PRO) to career-based extensions (for example .ATTORNEY, .DOCTOR, .DENTIST). These TLDs give businesses even more opportunities to carve out digital identities that closely align with their brand’s ethos and target market.

When offering domains directly in your platform, you can offer these options within the customer journey and surface the most relevant domains related to your customers’ domain searches. At Name.com, an Identity Digital company, this is done through Domain Engine, which produces a wide range of lightning-fast, relevant results at your customers’ fingertips.

Reselling domains – flexible options that fit your needs

Integrating domain reselling as an add-on service into a platform suite can feel daunting. However, it doesn’t have to require strong technical knowledge or considerable initial development work. In fact, it’s possible to start reselling domains in less than a day. And, despite the common assumption of high upfront cost, domain reselling doesn’t require any capital investment, either. 

Name.com Reseller Solution makes it possible to integrate domain name services seamlessly and affordably. Choose three solutions that fit your platform and dev team’s needs: a no code, low code, or an advanced API option. 

Landing page

Name.com offers a landing page domain reselling option where you can direct your customers to a co-branded web page at Name.com. It’s a no-code option that allows you to start offering domains in as little as a day. Your customers search for, buy, and manage their new domain name at Name.com. This means you don’t have to deal with any customer service issues relating to the domain name, or transfers of the domain if the customer leaves your platform. Best of all, Name.com will automate domain linking for you. That means if your customers purchase a domain name on the landing page, their new domain will be automatically linked to the website they built on your platform, eliminating the need for them to manually configure their domain name.

Benefits of the landing page option include:

• Simplest solution
• No coding needed
• Co-branded page
• Fastest time-to-market option
• Automated domain linking 

iFrame

The Name.com iFrame integration is a low code approach that still doesn’t require a heavy technical lift. After registering as a domain reseller with Name.com, you’ll get a unique partner key that allows you to display Name.com domain search and purchase features in an iFrame on your site. That way, you can keep subscribers on your site and offer a more integrated experience. 

This option has flexibility for basic appearance and branding consistency while reducing security concerns, all with minimal development efforts. It can be the answer for those with limited resources looking to implement a resale solution without extensive effort. 

If you’re curious about domain reselling, this is a great option. Registering as a domain reseller is incredibly easy, and the Name.com iFrame keeps your existing user flow almost the same. Plus, there are no up-front costs to implementing the iFrame and your customers will get automated domain linking. 

Benefits of the iFrame option include:

• Streamlined customer experience
• Easy implementation
• Cost-effective
• Fast time-to-market in a day or less
• Automated domain linking

API

The API approach is more technically complex and requires an additional in-depth initial advanced setup. That said, it also offers the most integrated user experience for your customers, and the highest revenue potential because you can set your own retail domain pricing. Name.com’s RESTful API (adheres to Representational State Transfer principles) makes data exchange between client and server very efficient. The API creates a seamless domain reselling integration into your platform. Because the domain resale experience is completely branded through your site, the API provides a white-labeled user experience that further enhances trust in your platform.

Reselling via Name.com’s API is a great option for platforms whose customers have significant domain demand or are seeing initial traction from the iFrame solution. 

Benefits of the API option include:

• Streamlined integration
• Recurring revenue option (through domain registrations and renewals)
• Real-time availability 
• Tailored customization and control
• Full automation
• Scalable
• Automated domain linking

Get started

Competing in today’s digital landscape is more challenging than ever. Integrating domains into your platform not only provides customers with a seamless user experience but has the opportunity to separate average SaaS platforms from industry leaders. 

Now you understand domain offerings are more than just a commodity – they significantly enhance and complement your existing suite of tools, all while creating a more cohesive user flow and revenue stream. By streamlining the process seamlessly within the customer journey, your platform can leverage the power of descriptive domains to become an industry leader.

With Name.com Reseller Solutions, you can find the right solution for your platform. Contact us at Name.com to get started today.   

Sources: 

Straits Research, The Domain Name Registrar Market in 2022: New Trends and Strategies

https://straitsresearch.com/article/the-domain-name-registrar-market-in-2022-new-trends-and-strategies

Statista, How Many Websites Are There? https://www.statista.com/chart/19058/number-of-websites-online/

Statista, Frequency of application programming interface (API) breakages and changes worldwide as of 2020, by API category, https://www.statista.com/statistics/1083219/worldwide-api-performance/