Epik Recent Innovation Glitches

[dande]

Everyone knows I'm a strong believer in Epik platforms and would like to see them succeed. Make no mistakes about it. There are many positives about Epik but one or two bad negatives can destroy the whole thing. The purpose of this thread is not to condemn but to trigger a discussion.

Late later year, I moved some of my domains from Uni to Epik in hope of better days. But after nearly a year of no inquiries nor reasonable sales, I decided to test the lander, trying to see what potential buyers use to see, and what I discovered truly horrifies me.

1. A buyer will click on "Buy Now" button and the first thing he sees is a warning that his domain will be delayed for 60days before transferring to another registrar. To a Domainer, that's not a problem. To an end user, it's a huge turn off, capable of destroying a sale.

2. If the buyer managed to scale the first huddle and continued with Signup. After signing up at Epik.com he will be required to verify his email. The person will head to his inbox looking for email from Epik. On getting to the inbox or spam folder, what he will see is FederatedIdentity.com. Another big confusion capable of turning away good number of potential buyers. How is the new customer suppose to know that FederatedIdentity is the same as Epik?

The FederatedIdentity (to me) is a completely Bogus Innovation.

3. Now, if the buyer did scale yet the huddle and clicked on the verification link, the page below is what he will get.

To continue the signup all over again!

At this point, even the most serious buyer will give up and start looking for alternatives.

4. But, if his life depends on the domain and he continued with the second signup. After filling the form and clicked the "Save Settings", the whole process will simply end there. There will be no redirection to the domain transaction he has been going through all these troubles for. He's
simply gonna start the process of searching for the domain name all over again. God help him if he's an impulse buyer and has forgotten the name.

I'm of the opinion that Epik is not concentrating on what matters most. They want to be everywhere at the same time. Thereby, sacrificing users experience and good conversation rate.

I believe sales are going down the drain before of these. I still have so many things to complain about the platform but let me leave for others. If you've noticed anything, pls share it on this thread.

 

[7363824]

Are all these fragmented side projects really even beneficial or necessary to their actual user base?

Brad

I don't use all their little side things but I am sure there are those who do. For the ones I use I am glad they have them. I am glad they try to innovate and create new things they think will be useful, even if they don;t end up working out. Yes they are a small privately held company, they have nothing near the marketshare of Godaddy or Network Solutions, they can't afford to be complacent and stagnant like Godaddy IMO and they do some real good stuff outside of just being a registrar.

 

[Samer]

I don't use all their little side things but I am sure there are those who do. For the ones I use I am glad they have them. I am glad they try to innovate and create new things they think will be useful, even if they don;t end up working out. Yes they are a small privately held company, they have nothing near the marketshare of Godaddy or Network Solutions, they can't afford to be complacent and stagnant like Godaddy IMO and they do some real good stuff outside of just being a registrar.

100%; NameLiquidate is success; example. Theyre not “side projects” too! Anonymize.com is an actual product.
More Privacy product than Dynadot, NS IMO..

Just all-around registrar 100% own services;
Better than “global brand” GD imo... (for me)
i like company full 100% control of its services
“side projects” is unfair mischaracterization imo

Great catch

 

[7363824]

I would say NL is their biggest innovation. Everything else is already being done.

Being done, yes, but that doesn't mean there isn't room for Epik to do it better. Take Anonymize their privacy service, been done before, but AFAIK only Epik is able to be used at any registrar.

Sure, innovation is good. But not all "innovation" is actual innovation.

There have been countless products and services that were innovative and failed due to lack of demand, or they were not quite as innovative or game changing as they were hyped to be.

Silicon Valley is littered with the carcasses of these companies.

You could argue grow your core business. Get that dialed in, then start branching out.

The total market size for domains is nowhere close to consumer electronics. That is not even debatable.
How many people have a mobile phone, computer, tablet, etc. It is from need.

How many people need domains? Not as many, and even if everyone did the cost is far lower than the consumer devices. Hence, the potential market size is far smaller.

Comparing GoDaddy to Apple is silly.

Brad

Every company has its failures. You don't know what is going to be a hit or a dud until you get out and do it, but the key to success to to be quick to adapt. I think Epik does that well.

 

[Rob Monster]

Glad to hear that got solved. FWIW I can see from Epik's point of view why the grace period is so short since the registry will collect the renewal on the expiry date whether or not Epik has your payment. So I get the impact on cash flow and appreciate their willingness to extend it.

That said I really don't like the 2 year minimum if its already expired. And I know they will do it for 1yr if you ask but I think by default it should be standard 1year. Instead they should have some sort of upsell dialog or banner saying something like Did you know you can renew for up to 10 years? IMO

See Expired Domains Policy here:

https://www.epik.com/support/faq/expired-registration-recovery-policy/

A few thoughts:

1. We can go up to 35 days on .COM for example. Just ask.

2. We uniquely allow you to monetize your own expiry stream with NameLiquidate.com. You can even automate it:

https://registrar.epik.com/account/portfolio-settings/

There is a portfolio setting that lets you opt out of the default 2 year grace renewal.

I am actually not aware of another company that is doing as much to empower domainers to monetize their expiry streams at any registrar.

 

[branding]

As a matter of fact,I'm tired of registrars hiding behind old and outdated ICANN regulation.

 

[Rob Monster]

That 60 day lock is not an ICANN requirement. Shame.

Last I checked with ICANN, we are required to have folks opt out and we make that easy:

Besides, we don't enforce it.

That said, will check with @Sufyan Alani if we can drop that checkbox entirely and not be outside of ICANN compliance.

 

[ivey]

Wow, they make Uniregistry look like geniuses...

 

[Lord Antares]

Good points. The email part especially looks really shady, they need to do away with that.

Hope the feedback is heard and considered by Epik.

 

[blogspotter]

And why do they need to logion from the Fedexxxidenty page to do a single sign on. Why not use the fed identity auth and single sign from any of the epik properties? Login from epik/nameliquidate etc can be domen from the respective home pages and Fedid in the backend.

Any additional step puts off a buyer.

 

[Rob Monster]

I agree.

Let's be honest. Epik is a small, privately held company. They are not GoDaddy.
Are all these fragmented side projects really even beneficial or necessary to their actual user base?

Brad

Apple's market cap is now about about $2.2 trillion. Godaddy is about $14 billion. Spot the difference?

This is where Apple started:

One of the things that did make Apple great was vision. The other thing was enthusiastic early adopters.

Lord-willing, we too get to do something cool.

 

[bmugford]

Apple and Tesla’s wondrous innovative culture.
Godaddy could learn a thing or too...
Godaddy seem content like; Ford GM FCAU..
Be the innovation you want to create..
epik embodies that spirit; WE COMIN FOR GD

Sure, innovation is good. But not all "innovation" is actual innovation.

There have been countless products and services that were innovative and failed due to lack of demand, or they were not quite as innovative or game changing as they were hyped to be.

Silicon Valley is littered with the carcasses of these companies.

You could argue grow your core business. Get that dialed in, then start branching out.

The total market size for domains is nowhere close to consumer electronics. That is not even debatable.
How many people have a mobile phone, computer, tablet, etc. It is from need.

How many people need domains? Not as many, and even if everyone did the cost is far lower than the consumer devices. Hence, the potential market size is far smaller.

Comparing GoDaddy to Apple is silly.

Brad

 

[Ostrados]

FederatedIdentity is not needed at all I see it as an additional friction.. now login is slow you get FederatedIdentity page then you need to wait for the redirect to login page! what is the point of all of this?! Just show the login box and let me login.

Learn from Google you login once from any of their products and you are logged in everywhere.

 

[Shawn T]

Extremely good points. I never actually thought to test the buying form while I was using Epik landers.
This is horrible UX which has a very real business consequence.

I am open for UX consults and services if needed

 

[D Haynes]

Yikes I never knew it was this difficult and convaluted to make a purchase on Epik. This is not good at all. Think I'll be changing my landers back to Dan if this doesn't change.

It should be click the BIN button, create an account on a single page maybe with a code sent to a mobile to verify the account so they don't need to come away from the purchase page, then go straight through to the checkout.

The federated identity thing is not needed for someone carrying out a single time purchase.

 

[7363824]

Yes, the the difference is domains don't have the market size of consumer electronics.

No but I would say domains have a bigger market that this new idea of a personal computer did in the 80's.

And it's not just Apple, look at any successful company in any industry. They are all innovators, they all diversify beyond just 1 thing. It's not guarantee of success but not doing is is almost guarantee of failure.

 

[branding]

I love it!

Apple and Tesla’s wondrous innovative culture.
Godaddy could learn a thing or too...
Godaddy seem content like; Ford GM FCAU..
Be the innovation you want to create..
epik embodies that spirit; We COMING 4 GD !! Soon See”empowerment”more than buzz word
Epik all day!!

I would say NL is their biggest innovation. Everything else is already being done.

 

[Silentptnr]

I think that Epik should dedicate a team member to user testing.

There are definitely glitches that could be easily remedied. For example, on the "free appraisal", if a user not logged in, they reach the Free Appraisal page, enter a domain name, then the results page gives a message..."To continue using our free WHOIS service, please login or create an Epik account."

It should say something like please login to use this tool or something. People might get frustrated when it says free, takes you to the page, let's you enter a domain, then no results and a message in red talking about using Whois. It should be professional.

 

[Silentptnr]

I appreciate that epik said it’s free
you have to say it’s free somewhere

Yes, free is great but my point was that for most people it is confusing and not cohesive. How did I end up on a page with a red message about Whois service. This was for a free domain appraisal.

On GD, you go to the free appraisal page, put in a name, logged in or not, and get a GV. The free version on Epik should be as easy. Otherwise, it seems gimmicky. The only other thing on the appraisal result page is the option to add a pro appraisal to cart for $399. Just saying.

 

[Silentptnr]

Plenty of information out there about FI. It's not new. It's actually a technical term. A generic of sorts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federated_identity

https://selfkey.org/what-is-federated-identity-management/

Anyway, whatever the name, sso can be a good thing, just think it could be more transparent to the sign in process. A good start towards a sso solution.

*Edit: I think it's all the more reason to name this solution something like epik. Maybe a subdomain like sso.epik.com.

 

[Rob Monster]

As for the SSO, I do consider it to be strategic for the expansion of the platform and ecosystem.

Ultimately, I think we are wise to improve Federated Identity in terms of its usefulness to approved partners. I see 4 tiers of partners:

1. Epik subsidiaries and legal partners, e.g. Anonymize, Inc
2. Strategic partners and affiliates, e.g. Forum partners, Parking partners
3. Customers who build on Epik, e.g SiteBuilder, WHMCS resellers, WP plug-in
4. Non-customers, by approval, with verified domain status.

Right now we are at stage 1.

Stage 4 can be made possible through technology like TrustRatings and DNProtect to give us early warning indicators if a SSO partner would be high risk to include in the SSO federation.

Through this approach, I can see how we can reduce transactional friction for site owners who are low risk to consumers who choose to use small enterprise rather than rely on Amazon, Google, Facebook, etc

There are large players in the SSO space, e.g. Auth0, but despite vast spend most have little in the way of user traction. That market remains wide open for innovation and is a topic that I have followed for 13 years.

In the meantime, in response to this thread, do rest assured that there is progress happening already this week on 2 fronts:

1. The guest checkout should be streamlined by Friday.

2. The SSO feedback in this thread is being closely reviewed to drive improvements.

Long story short: Epik is committed to a SSO strategy and we appreciate the feedback from demanding, sophisticated customers and technologists to make it great.

By all means, keep the feedback coming. Those who, in good faith, engage in co-creation will be acknowledged either in public or in private.

 

[oldtimer]

Although getting feedbacks from the members here is a valuable thing and can help streamline certain problems, but in all fairness to Rob who is open to hearing all our feedbacks I believe that we should do it with a little less negativity and animosity and go about it in a more positive and constructive way. I am glad to see that the title of this thread which referred to bogus innovations has now been changed to something more positive.

While we are on the subject of creating better and easier experience for clients and customers (including domainers) I noticed that when I went to renew some of my domains that had expired two or three days ago ( on August 31) it only gave me the option to renew them if I did it for the minimum of 2 years which doubled the renewal price.

I believe that this can create a bad experience for domainers if they can't renew their domains for one year the day after they are expired. Unwilling to pay double to renew my domains I decided to register some new domains, but I wish I could get the full 45 days grace period to renew my domains at the Special 8 dollar price without being penalized and having to pay extra.


PS: just got a message from Rob that said he has extended the grace period on my account so that I can renew my domains for one year at a time at the special rate, I guess if they ask he will do this for domainers where the renewal charges are a main factor for them. (Thanks Rob).

IMO

 

[Shawn T]

I'd guess that the form page probably sees more than a 75% drop-off rate, wouldn't be surprised if it was close to 90% or more.

 

[Samer]

Said single sign-on feature enhances security.

IMO they should just stick with the Epik brand for their federated ID, less confusion since Epik is their main brand and a better name.

I agree; im using it as an example;
Mine is better than past tense “federated” Rob, Dont use mine... just meant to portray 2 cents..
Rob, can you explain; best in layman's terms
what does “federated” mean?

 

[Samer]

Yes, of course. That is why they are called Unicorns.

Our single sign on and cloud wallet are part of an architecture that connects and empowers. It is architected to enable a range of applications and services to all connect seamlessly. Today, Epik is the only company in the world that has connected all of this under one roof in a single enterprise:

• Registry
• Registrar
• Resilient hosting
• Content Delivery Network
• DDoS mitigation
• ISP, ASN, BGP, and IPv4/v6
• Anycast DNS
• SSL/TLS provisioning
• VPN

For the domainer, we do also have the most complete framework for powering the domain value chain:

• Value: https://appraise.epik.com/
• Hold: https://registrar.epik.com/
• Acquire: https://marketplace.epik.com/
• Pay: https://masterbucks.com
• Finance: https://domainequity.com/
• Protect: https://dnprotect.com/e
• Sell: https://escrow.epik.com/
• Liquidate: https://nameliquidate.com/

In short, we elected to connect the entire data delivery stack and built it around the domain name value chain since most digital enterprises will start with a domain name and build out from there.

Why do most people buy at Amazon? Largely for convenience. They don't need to take a risk saving identity, payments, preferences or shipping details in more than one place.

Success models like Shopify do prove that there is power in creating ecosystems that lift up small enterprise. Their market cap is now $136 billion. Overstock is about $3.5 billion.

Platforms and ecosystems are hard to build but offer much value when they co-create abundance and connect the vast pool of time, talent and treasure that still remains highly fragmented in the world.

Nobody said it would be easy but Lord-willing we get to work on it at a time when small enterprise, including small domainers, are struggling to compete against winner-take-all.

Amazing.

I dont disagree any of this.
Epik escrow is my particular favorite;

The problem remains... about that FederatedItentity name....
It's been a long time since our last naming contest ;P (i tried lol; even maintain FI subsidiary)
I think, unless steps are taken, FI will be deterrent imo... You have a good thing going! Reconsider;

Use the NamesCon poster posted here; and drew "Outrage" it was bright and colorful, not like 8 syllable Federated Identity
Self-sabotage; Amazon + Google syllables added together, still falls multiple short FI...

"Alphabet" is also 3 syllables,
Parent Company of "Google"
"Apple" is 2 syllables.

 

[7363824]

Important to add that people with Fedophobia will run away at the sight of Federatedidentity. Sounds like something that involves sending the users identity to the Federal Government.