Are your payment card details up to date with your domain registrar?
Do you even know who your domain registrar is?
Recently I was alerted to two domains that had stopped working. The websites were down and the emails were inaccessible.
The first company (let’s call it company A) soon realised that their website was down and when I checked the domain details, I found that it had recently expired.
Domain registrar’s responsibility
To meet the requirements of the ICANN Expired Registration Recovery Policy (ERRP). Domain registrars automatically email their domain customers notifying them of their pending domain expiry. They may even email notifications about customers’ out-of-date payment card details – I’m sure the ones I use do. After that there is probably nothing more they can do. Phoning around all their customers with expiring domains would be prohibitively expensive and I’m sure that many domains are left to expire naturally so they would be wasting a lot of time.
What happened to company A
It was discovered that Company A had received the emails from the domain registrar, but the person receiving them either didn’t read them or didn’t understand their importance. Once I discovered the reason for the downtime, the payment card details were updated and the website and emails were soon working again. All with minimal disruption.
What happened to company B
The other company (for consistency, I’ll call company B) for some reason didn’t renew their domain when it was discovered that it had expired. It’s still beyond me why they didn’t.
Once the domain expires it enters a period of renewal grace the length of which depends on the TLD (.com, .co.uk, .net etc.). In this case, the grace period was 45 days and they could have renewed it during this period for the standard domain name purchase price with no additional fee. They didn’t. After the renewal grace period, there was a further period of 30 days in which the domain could have been renewed, but at a cost. For this domain that was £175. They still didn’t renew it. They were hoping to re-buy it when the domain became available on the open market, which was 5 days after the final period expired. A great plan as long as nobody else decides to step in and buy it. Oops, guess what happened. An automated robot popped along and picked it up immediately it became available.
Company B had to purchase a new domain for their website with a similar, but different, name.
What does this slightly different website address mean for the company and its reputation?
1. Existing email accounts
These become inaccessible. All those emails containing vital correspondence with customers and clients is lost. You’ll need to tell everyone about your new email address. How long will that take?
2. The website and emails need to be re-hosted
A new hosting account for the new domain must be created.
3. Competitors can pick up business
As your digital presence has effectively been lost, your competitors can step in.
4. Exiting accounts with other online services
These could become inaccessible. Password reset emails aren’t possible as they will have your email address set to your old domain.
5. Potential customers think your business has closed?
As you no longer own the old domain, you can’t redirect traffic, meaning visitors may think you have ceased trading.
6. Derogatory content
If a competitor or disgruntled customer has the old domain, there no telling what they could put on that domain’s website. There’s nothing stopping them putting a single page website saying whatever they like about you.
7. Broken internal links
All internal website links must be recreated to feature the new domain.
8. The website’s forms will not send
All the forms will need to have their forwarding address(es) updated.
9. Bye bye SEO. Your SERPs ranking is wiped out
All those years of SEO efforts and search engines crawling your website, recording the URLs will have been lost. Watch as your website ranking plummets.
10. Printed material
All print mentioning the website’s URL must be redesigned and reprinted with the new URL — letterheads, business cards, invoices and so on.
11. Signage
All signage that features the domain must be recreated — vehicle livery, pop-up banners, posters, Zoom backdrops etc
12. Social media links
Existing social media posts will need links to your website updated.
13. Other external links
A part of SEO is how many high value backlinks to your website you have. These have just been wiped out!
14. Existing website users can no longer login
Contacting these users could be a major task.
15. Suppliers
Do your suppliers need to access your website? They will all have to be informed of the new URL.
16. PPC
Any Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising that’s running will have to be redone.
17. Website Analytics
Historical data from Google or similar Analytics will not be transferable to the new domain.
18. Legal entities, HMRC and others
They will need to know your new contact details.
The moral of this story
Simply make sure your payment cards are current and don’t ignore those emails from your domain registrar. They’re not always trying to upsell you to another product!
From the Branding, Domain & Email categories Be consistent
Use the same domain for both your emails and your website, it’s consistent and helps people discover your website from your email address.
