In October, Afternic made a significant upgrade to the user control panel in a beta platform that became available to all sellers. The objective was to integrate some of GoDaddy’s look and feel as well as provide functionality upgrades for Afternic customers. I’ve been toggling back and forth between the beta and classic version, and I think the new platform offers a cleaner look and saves me time making pricing updates.
This afternoon, Afternic unveiled a new dashboard to all customers with added features and enhanced functionality. I have spent a bit of time using the new dashboard, and I think it is a solid upgrade from the classic platform.
I asked a representative from GoDaddy to share what updates were made and are now available, and here’s what I was told:
- New Dashboard with brand new UX consistent with GoDaddy design aesthetic
- Separate dashboard sections for account alerts, performance, suggestions, and activity
- Activity section shows new offers, price requests, and domain fulfillment cards requiring your attention
- Performance section shows cards with stats pertaining to your YTD domain sales
- Suggestions section shows cards with guidance that will help you improve your sales velocity (example card: Domain listings without Buy Now prices)
- Account alerts section displays cards pertaining to account setup actions you need to take
In short, it is now easier to get an overall picture of my domain names at Afternic, locate any issues that need to be addressed, and get suggestions on pricing or pricing updates that I should consider making. This is a big step in a good direction from a seller’s perspective. What I appreciate the most at this point is the ease of seeing overall status updates and the ease of changing pricing.
I also like where Afternic is going with its pricing suggestions, particularly as they related to my inventory-quality domain names I am happy to move. There is still work to be done to make this more helpful to me, but it may be of some assistance to users with more domain names in their portfolio. I know some people might balk at this, but I think with additional fine-tuning and input from customers (including mine below), this suggestion section could become quite helpful.
There are a few things I think GoDaddy can address to further enhance the Afternic experience:
- Offer more data about my domain names and searches within the GoDaddy ecosystem. For instance, I would like to see how many Whois searches are performed for my domain names and how many times my individual domain names are searched by GoDaddy (and partner) customers.
- Offer some insights based on the company’s valuation algorithm. I don’t like the public appraisal tool because it can give a prospective buyer the wrong idea about the value of domain names. However, that tool isn’t going away and it may be able to offer insight to sellers. It would be interesting if some of the bulk appraisal tool metrics were carried over to offer sellers insights. Before the bulk appraisal tool was discontinued, it showed the likelihood of a sale within a year if priced at $500 and if priced at the GoValue figure. It would be interesting if Afternic gave an estimated sale % based on pricing. For instance, if I price DomainInvesting.com at $20,000, there’s a 98% chance of selling in a year, but if priced at $500,000, there’s a 3% chance of it selling.
- Fix engineering issues causing error messages. I continue to see various browser not resolving errors when poking around the website. For instance, I just saw this error: “400 Bad request Your browser sent an invalid request.”
- Remove notifications I dismissed. I keep dismissing the notification about setting up “a payee account to receive your parking revenue payments.” but it keeps reappearing. If I dismiss something, it should stay dismissed.
There is a feedback button on the right side of the page, and I was told that Afternic management is actively reviewing submitted feedback. If you see something funky or would like to make suggestions, you should share it there. You are also welcome to discuss in the comment section here.
In the 1st place, why the hell do they still want to call Afternic??
My guess is that partner registrars don’t want to promote the GoDaddy brand name but don’t have issues with the Afternic brand name.
Then why Godaddy partners with Afternic when Afternic has nothing to offer?
Godaddy could have easily built their own platform.
GoDaddy is not “partnering” with Afternic. GoDaddy owns Afternic.
Change the damn name….all roads lead to Godaddy!!!
do you see afternic or godaddy advertise at baseball games?
Voodoo WAS a great great parking company and where the hell is the owner??
Is it run by a one man company?
If he is no where to be found, will the domain name be expired???
Even Voodoo name is better than Afternic
The players in the industry are very diverse. Some have your knowledge @BullS and others (the vast majority) probably not. A brand is a long term investment (it’s why we are in the domaining business) and making a name change is a BIG DEAL because it involves education (something no brander wants to undertake if they have ever tried this path). VERY expensive and not always fruitful. How long did it take Google to change and they are still referred to as Google. How about Facebook. You don’t hear the @Kardasians or the @DaymondJohn of the world saying let’s post on “Meta”. So… simple answer is “path of least resistance”. My Humble Opinion as one of those guys that has had to Brand for large firms for decades.