Opportunity:
FairWinds’ client, one of the nation’s largest personal insurance providers, needed to find a way to streamline its domain name portfolio in order to optimize its brand visibility online as well as to increase overall brand-protection. The client counts on its website to inform and interact with current and potential customers; therefore, ensuring the safest and smoothest customer experience was one of the most critical aspects of this project. After an initial discovery discussion with the client, as well as a thorough review of the client’s specific needs and competitors, FairWinds initiated an Efficiency Project in order to evaluate the client’s current domain profile and identify opportunities within the domain landscape.
Approach:
The purpose of the Efficiency is to deliver quick recommendations and measureable improvements to a client’s domain name program through an in-depth analysis of the client’s business, brands, products, and existing domain portfolio. The Efficiency also includes key recommendations regarding the client’s social media handles and its presence in the new generic top-level domain (gTLD) space. In order to make the most effective recommendations, FairWinds began the Efficiency Project by conducting thorough research, then adopting a four-pronged approach to auditing the client’s domain portfolio, including: reviewing the entire portfolio to identify domain names that could be cut; creating a list of available, high value domain names; identifying third party-owned domains that should be recovered; and highlighting those domains within the existing portfolio that did not resolve to proper content.
Impact:
FairWinds’ analysis revealed that although the client’s domain portfolio contained 639 domain names, only 17% of those domains actually resolved to relevant content. In other words, the client was wasting resources and missing opportunities on 83% of its domain name holdings. Additionally, FairWinds identified over 300 domain names that the client could cut from its portfolio with no risk of diverted traffic, infringement, or brand dilution. Cutting these domains would also deliver significant savings to the client in yearly registration fees. During its research into third-party owned domains, FairWinds discovered 24 high-value domains that were garnering a combined 627,400 visitors per year and costing the client nearly $417,000 in lost sales and $350,000 in paid search fees. FairWinds advised the client to prioritize these domains for acquisition. This project served as a springboard for a carefully crafted, long-term domain name strategy, which FairWinds was then able to design and implement for the client.