Relationships Matter
Having a great registry platform is a great start. As with any business, marketplace access is going to be essential for a TLD which measures its success on volume of registrations.
Registrars and their resellers are the only ICANN-approved sales channel, with the exception of auctions. Registrars are where customers go to register and manage their domains.
The channel of existing ICANN-accredited registrars and their resellers will play a vital role in registration of domains in new extensions. They will be able to offer these new extensions to their existing base of customers, and also use their portals to help new registrants register and manage domain names.
With possibly hundreds of new TLDs coming online, registrars will be picking and choosing which ones they want to include, and which to feature. They will have to set up formal relationships with each registry, establish financial relations, change their web pages to accommodate them (a formidable design challenge), do the technical integrations, and set up operational working procedures. As a practical matter, the big registrars will be reluctant to sell domain names for new TLDs unless they think there are going to be some sales.
Doing smart marketing is one important step to entice registrars to feature your TLD.
The other crucial factor in a registrar decision is technical integration. It takes, on average, at least 60 to 90 days to integrate a TLD for a small to medium sized registrar, and sometimes longer depending upon the complexity or number of steps involved. Assimilating tens or hundreds of TLDs is will be a challenge for registrars, who will narrow the list down to perhaps 2-3 integrations for any given release schedule, which is every 3 to 6 months.
Using Espresso means accelerating past this roadblock, because many registrars are already integrated at a technical level. Espresso is based upon CoCCA’s platform for TLDs, and over 150 registrars of all sizes and profiles connect and are fully integrated to the CoCCA platform in order to provide service to more than 20 ccTLDs. This pre-integration is going to make a decision to include your TLD a lot easier for them.
