There were three major remodels last week: Sedo, Dotster, and Dynadot. While the reviews have been mixed, I would say that Dynadot was the most successful of the bunch and not just because they were the only company to leave a login form on the homepage.

Sedo

The largest of the three companies–both in terms of revenues and employees–they made the most dramatic changes. They simplified the homepage, added photos of smiling women to every page, and changed their javascript menus to be more stylish. Unfortunately, the new menus are impossibly difficult to use. The site is still slow with some pages (“Statistics” tab under “Domain Parking”) taking 10 seconds to load, possibly because their web servers are in Europe which makes it slow for US customers. With simplicity comes complexity, as it now takes me two additional clicks to reach the parking “Overview” page. Unfortunately, the default page (“Statistics”) under “Domain Parking” is also the slowest page. I timed how long it took me to get to the “Overview” page at 22 seconds after initially typing in the Sedo homepage URL.

One of Sedo’s challenges has long been their ability to keep currency punctuation and the URL consistent while browsing their website. Even now the “Price” dropdown on the domain search page and parking “Overview” page use the German punctuation instead of English. Despite minor bugs like this, I give Sedo a lot of credit for customizing their website. I am aware of many US-based websites in the domain industry that do not give the option of German punctuation.

While I’m not super happy about the website operations for parking customers, the homepage has definitely improved by changing focus from the small ticket domain auctions to end-user domain buyers. With their high volume of buyers, I would expect these changes to improve their sales numbers. I think a lot more could be done to better accommodate domain buyers, to help them navigate the huge number of domains that Sedo has listed but that’s better explored in another article.

Dotster

With a history of redesigns that added unnecessary complexity and bugs that are subsequently never fixed, this redesign (version 7) continues that trend. Where the last redesign marginalized the bulk domain name search with bugs and obfuscation, this redesign removes the bulk domain search functionality from the homepage and leaves unfixed the “select all” bug created in version 6 that adds “taken” domains to your shopping cart.

They also updated their logo to be more 3D by adding a shadow, and thinned out the font:

Old Logo

New Logo

The new simplified homepage is a huge improvement over the last version and places web hosting as the primary product offered. Domain registrars have increasingly relied on webhosting to increase profit margins in an industry where registry fees are high and price competition among registrars is tight.

Like Sedo, they removed the login form from the homepage and placed all design efforts at attracting new customers. Unfortunately they seem to have messed up the Account Management Control Panel:

Dotster Bug

Dynadot

The Dynadot redesign included a new logo, a slightly redesigned homepage, and an increase in registration prices. There was no real change to the functionality of the site, the most significant change in functionality was the consolidation of marketing boxes along the right side of the homepage. The reason I liked the Dynadot redesign the most was because they did not make it more difficult for existing customers to use the website, and the new logo is an improvement.

Old Logo

New Logo