GoDaddy’s Afternic Launches New Features in Beta

GoDaddy’s Afternic has been hard at work developing new tools for users of its marketplace.

After launching a beta program in June 2021 that included a fresh design and new features, the company has continued innovating and has now released a new beta experience. Here are some of the highlights from Afternic’s new beta release:

 

Updated Design

Afternic’s developers have created a new dashboard design, which is reminiscent of GoDaddy’s registrar interface. While I’m assured the design and colors will continue to be developed, it’s nice to see consistency across GoDaddy’s products.

More functionality will be introduced, but from a first glance, it’s a step forward from the “classic” Afternic design.

 

Cards & Tabs

One of the most noticeable changes is the addition of four tabs named Activity, Performance, Suggestions, and Account. These tabs contain all of the typical features that allow domain sellers to manage listings and perform administrative tasks.

Each separate task has its own card. In the screenshot above, for example, is a card under the Account tab prompting me to enter some payment details.

 

Activity: This tab shows new offers, price requests, and domain fulfillment tasks such as prompts to transfer a domain name.

Performance: Want to know stats about your sales from the year to date? The performance tab offers quick access to your Afternic sales data.

Suggestions: This tab is designed to help you improve sales volume. For example, if GoDaddy’s data suggests you would benefit from adding a “buy it now” price to a listing, it’ll let you know here.

The suggestions tab also has a “sell faster” prompt, using GoDaddy valuations to guide you to either raise or lower prices. Lowering prices in line with GoDaddy’s estimated value is something the company says will help you sell faster.

While I don’t like automated appraisals for individual domain listings and I’d personally ignore the estimated value column in lieu of my own valuation techniques, the estimated values provided may help investors to know whether their pricing could be unrealistic. Lowering the price in that scenario may help a domain to sell faster.

 

Account: Anything pertaining to account administration tasks will be housed under this heading. Again, each task or prompt will be displayed on a different card.

 

Portfolio Summary

Constantly present at the side of the dashboard is a new portfolio summary feature. This simply gives a brief overview of your portfolio, allowing you to quickly notice if there are any errors within your portfolio. For example, if you have domains pending review or domain names not listed for sale, you’ll be able to find them here.

 

Feedback

Since this is a beta edition, you’re able to submit feedback on your experience. On the right-hand side of each page of the beta site, there’s a “Feedback” link. This will put you in direct contact with the Afternic development team.

If you have a feature you’d like to see, for example, use that Feedback link.

 

I find the old Afternic dashboard difficult to navigate sometimes, so a redesign is welcome. The new dashboard design and the addition of tabs make listing management far easier. A beta, by definition, isn’t perfect and while there are more features that investors would like to see, I think this is a step in the right direction for Afternic.