NIC.AT, the official registry of the country-code Top-Level-Domain of Austria, just unveiled their new NIC.AT Report.  The Registry will be publishing this report three times a year to keep registrants and registrars abreast of the latest developments, trends and issues within the .AT universe.  Additionally, the reports will have facts and figures of the .at zone, including statistics on new registrations and geographic analysis of .AT’s influence around the globe.

The inaugural report showed that .AT, .co.AT and .or.AT are in very high demand.  With 932,132 Domains under Management, the Registry is at the doorstep of the magical 1 Million domain milestone.  Empirically, HEXONET can validate the growth in demand for .AT Domains, as our own reseller registrations for AT have also been steadily increasing this past year.

Amongst registrants, two thirds of all .AT Domains are registered by Austrian nationals, most of which originate from the beautiful city of Vienna.  Outside of Austria though, Germans are the most active among international registrants.

Interesting Statistics:

• 71% of all registered domains within the .AT zone are active websites.
• 20% are redirects, meaning these domains are redirected to other websites
• only 9% are utilized for Domain Parking (Pay-Per-Click)

Key Figures:

Registration History

Distribution of .AT Domains within Austria:

HEXONET would like to thank NIC.AT for publishing this excellent report, a must read for anyone in the industry or anyone connected to the Registry.  Again thanks to the Registry and specifically to our friends Richard Wein and Robert Schischka for making this report happen. For more details on the latest NIC.AT report along with information on the secondary market, please visit NIC.AT Report.

Source: www.NIC.AT

 

 
.AT Special Domain Pricing at HEXONET

Until April 30, 2010, HEXONET is running a .AT special volume pricing promotion where .AT domains can be registered as low as 2.14 (net price: 1.80) EUR per domain/year. The special .AT pricing is based on the volume a reseller does every 24 hours. Simply put, the more .AT domains registered in a given day the lower the price falls that day! Please note that at the end of the each day, discounts levels are reset back to the Daily Start Price of 3.45 (net price: 2.90) EUR per .AT domain.

Pro-rated Volume Pricing

• Domain Volume: 0 – 5 | .AT domains @ 3.45 (net price: 2.90) EUR per domain/year – Daily Start Price
• Domain Volume: 6 – 10 | .AT domains @ 2.86 (net price: 2.40) EUR per domain/year
• Domain Volume: 11 + | .AT domains @ 2.14 (net price: 1.80) EUR per domain/year

Rules and Program Guidelines

• This promotion ends April 30, 2010.
• Promotional prices only apply to new 1 year registrations (.AT domain renewals and/or transfers are excluded).
• The price promotion only applies to .AT. Excluded from this promotion are .CO.AT and .OR.AT Domains.
• Tiered pricing discounts are based on registrations over a 24 hour cycle.
• Pricing resets to the Daily Start Price at the end of each day (00:00 UTC).
• Daily 24 hour volume promotion was modeled using feedback from resellers and domainers to prevent abuse.

HEXONET recently had the fortune and opportunity to connect with Mr. Predrag Lesic, Chief Executive Officer of dot ME (DoMEn d.o.o. aka Domain.ME), to get his thinking on the .ME TLD.  Predrag’s insights on the .ME registry and where it may be heading are not only engaging, but also highly informative.  HEXONET would like to share his thoughts in this post.  If you have time, please read our last post, .ME Still a Sizzling Top-Level-Domain, as it provides a good context for this article, as well as, to why .ME has been so successful.

The Interview

HEXONET:
The .ME registry is quickly approaching the second anniversary of its “Go Live” this July 16, 2010, how many domains do you anticipate to have under management by then?  Also, what main factor do you attribute to .ME’s success thus far?

Predrag:
Well, considering the number of daily registrations we are currently seeing, we should expect to have approx. 430,000 Domains under management on our second anniversary. The main success thus far for .ME, besides it being a memorable TLD, having multiple varied uses, and the registry having outstanding relationships with its registrars, is the fact that Internet users have the ability to recognize not only the value of a domain name, but the value of a message sent through the name.  The Web is becoming more personal than ever, and the ability to create online content personalization is an integral part of .ME

HEXONET:
Your response is interesting, especially considering the advent of Social Networking and how .ME domains seem to be the ideal TLD for this growing social Internet.  Our suspicion is that .ME domains, as a whole, have a large proportion of its domain with active content.  And with content, your renewal rates will likely be much higher.  Do you have any statistics on .ME domain utilization (live vs. parked vs. dormant?), if so, would you be willing to share?

Predrag:
We actually have the same view.  The more content on .ME sites the better for our TLD. The registry with the help of Afilias ran a scan of all domains registered towards the end of last year and the results were very pleasing.  According to scan more than 79% of all domains under management were connected to active websites, out of which, more than 50.000 were  dedicated, i.e. having original content. We naturally had a certain number of redirections and referrals as well as parked domains.  However, this year’s trends show that we will see a great increase in the number of dedicated websites.

HEXONET:
Where is the .ME Registry heading? What do you expect over the next three years for .ME?

Predrag:
Our goal is to build a recognizable brand which will eventually become one of the the most frequently used online destinations for personal usage and branding.  So far .ME has proven itself to be a tremendous success. In the next three years we will direct our efforts to providing a more comprehensive approach for end users to more closely connect domain names, social media, and their personal usage together. We also expect a rise in the number of “call-to-action” domains. Companies, especially small businesses are increasingly moving their marketing activities online, and domain registration patterns like VERB.ME (e.g. “help.me”, “printfor.me” or even “fixmycar4.me) are among the most popular.  In addition to this, we are also planning to launch IDNs, and make even more significant impact on non-English markets.

HEXONET:
The .ME registry has ran many successful premium domain auctions in the past, including, Traffic Conference Sept. 2008, DomainFest Global ‘09, Sedo Online ‘09, NameJet ‘09, and more.  Do you still have many premium domains left and if so, what are your plans for the distribution these premium domains?

Predrag:
Yes, we have around 2500 premium domains left in the Registry.  As the auction have proven to be extremely successful in the past, we  will most likely auction off more names in the near future.  Nonetheless, we would actually like to see our premium names developed into prominant web addresses.  We got great exposure with widespread use of FB.ME and WP.ME, shorteners used by Facebook and Wordpress respectively, so our goals toward developing the premium names is a logical step forward.

A couple of months ago we launched our non-auction allocation procedure, which defines a development proposal, that makes development of a premium domain a higher criteria for allocation than auctioning. We are receiving applications on daily basis, and some domains have been already allocated. Very soon the web will get new social networks, a music marketplace and an online voice call application under a .ME domain.  We are open to receiving domain development proposals from all over the world, so if any of your readers or customers are interested in one of our premium domains, please submit a development proposal.

HEXONET:
Lastly could you elaborate on what you are doing to promote .ME within Montenegro?

Predrag:
As one of the leading companies in the IT sector in Montenegro we are concentrated on building awareness about the importance of I&C technologies. So far, we have donated PCs to Montenegrin NGOs and educational institutions, and last year we organized the summer school of computer science. At the moment, we are working on involving the Montenegrin Internet community in domain development projects. The idea is to build useful and reliable services under premium names which bear the meaning in our own language. We believe that this will contribute to raising awareness about the importance of the Internet usage and overall computer literacy.

In closing, HEXONET would like to sincerely thank Predrag for taking the time to answer our questions.  Additionally, we would like to wish the team and the entire registry much future success.

The .ME Team from left to right: Predrag Lesic (CEO), Natasa Djukanovic (Sales), Vuksan Rajkovic (Registrar Relations), Sanja Lazovic (Accounting Assistant) & Zeljko Draskovic (CTO)

HEXONET is also pleased to offering a sensational .ME Price Promotion throughout the end of June 2010:

Best Price Ever

• PRICE: 4.76 (net price: 4.00) EUR per domain/year

Rules

• Start Date: April 1, 2010 @ 10:00 CET.
• End Date: June 30, 2010
• Only new 1 year registrations are eligible
• Excluded are transfers and renewals

Sign-up is free of charge without any commitments.  If you have any questions whatsoever, please do not hesitate to contact us at Sales@hexonet.net.