Register.com Refocuses on SMB MarketBy Justin Lee, theWHIR.com
October 31, 2007 — (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — As the domain industry becomes saturated with offerings, the level of competition is rising accordingly. Even the veterans are finding it difficult to differentiate their services from competing domain registrars.
Recognizing this, domain register Register.com (register.com) has undergone a significant transformation within the past year, starting with the restructuring of its core management team.
Last November, the company named Larry Kutscher, a former senior VP and GM of the small business group for Dun & Bradstreet, its new CEO. Soon after, Mike Devine joined as CFO.
With the addition of Douglas Shuman as senior VP of customer marketing, the newly formed management team began to research its customer base. Finding that this group was comprised in large part of small businesses, Register.com decided to refocus its target market. Using the combined expertise of both a branding and a PR firm, Register.com sought to communicate its new focus to the SMB community.
“This is a whole new Register.com,” says Shuman. “First and foremost, we are focusing on core strategy. As a company, we are locked down on the small business segment. We realize there is a huge underserved marketplace out there.”
In refocusing its attention on small businesses, Register.com is expanding its domain name search capabilities. By partnering with domain marketplace sites NameMedia and Fabulous.com, the company is giving customers access to over 1.5 million premium domains - both new domains and domains that are currently registered but are available for resale.
This expansion enables small businesses to access both new domains and names that are currently registered but are available for resale.
“We’ve tapped into several providers to create a secondary market,” says Shuman. “We’ll tell you if the domain name is registered, or if it’s available through one of our secondary market providers. It is our goal not just to provide reasonably priced domain names, but to provide the best domain names in the marketplace.”
The company is currently in the process of re-launching all of its products to customize them for the needs of the small business customer. In July Register.com re-launched the “Do It Myself” Web hosting plan which enables small business users to customize their sites. The plan was successful, sparking growth of more than 10 percent in subscriptions since its launch.
The “Build My Website Custom” site design service has also proved popular. Register.com says it expects to publish close to 1,000 sites in its first year with this product.
Having doubled its percentage growth year-to-date from last year, Register.com is steadily strengthening its position as a leader in the small business market, says Shuman.
“We really want to be the IT department for small businesses as far as their Web services are concerned, so we’re designing our entire strategy around that need,” says Shuman. “And it’s a huge market. In a nutshell, our strategy is to be the most trusted provider of Web services for small businesses.
