.uk for £1

martin-s · Jun 30, 2015

The £1 price continues until 31st July, so there is still plenty of time to get involved and drive your .uk sales. Thank you to everyone who is already participating - http://registrars.nominet.org.uk/marketing-tools-and-events/uk-1-year-birthday

Next week will see a surprise .uk activity take place in central London. Short videos of the activity will be available, which you can use on social media and in your campaign. Look out for our email on Wednesday 8 July with full details... or follow our social media channels to get the information as it happens: like our Facebook page - UK Domain Family and follow us on Twitter @dotuk.

Please tell me Nominet haven't gone down the flash mob route?!

Retired_member41 · Jun 30, 2015

They may be advertising UK domains but if they mention £1 they will be in lumber.

martin-s · Jul 9, 2015

Balloons. Impressive.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYXfXaEQ5uo

DaveLeeds · Jul 9, 2015

Caz said:
They may be advertising UK domains but if they mention £1 they will be in lumber.

They do.

Lucky for Tesco that Mothers' Pride don't tell us how much they sell their bread for.

Alien · Jul 9, 2015

Ha ha, what a load of old twoddle!

spiderspider · Jul 9, 2015

martin-s said:
Balloons. Impressive.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYXfXaEQ5uo

WTF have they done to the Union Flag????!!! Thats bloody disgraceful!

If that was meant to help promote .uk then it failed, a total waste of money.

inbound · Jul 9, 2015

Buy now for £1 in first year, plus 3 more years at full price OR wait until .uk actually is known and then register prior to 5 year window closing?

What a choice...

Nobody cares about .uk apart from domainers and domainers are not daft enough to waste cash until they have to make that decision. Anyone new to domains will soon find very little of value being available under .uk - obviously.

Edwin · Jul 10, 2015

129 views - money clearly well spent!

accelerator · Jul 10, 2015

This campaign would have been better if the participants were all wearing .uk T-Shirts, and they all had consistent use of the Union Jack, e.g. all have an arm sleeve, or all have their face painted. Without that consistency, the message is getting lost somewhat.

scottmccloud · Jul 10, 2015

Edwin said:
129 views - money clearly well spent!

A good proportion of those from here I bet as well.

stellar73 · Jul 14, 2015

Cringeworthy! Looks like it's been made by a feckless group of Apprentice contestants, not even clear what it's advertising (if you didn't already know)

Edwin · Jul 14, 2015

It doesn't help that they are persisting with their clear-as-mud logo for .uk

scottmccloud · Jul 14, 2015

"On Wednesday 8 July London commuters were amazed to see groups of seemingly ordinary people transform into visible, successful individuals through the use of .uk."

What???????

martin-s · Jul 14, 2015

Still zero evidence of traction with news outlets. Unlike the starwars.co.uk decision.

namealot · Jul 27, 2015

martin-s said:
Balloons. Impressive.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYXfXaEQ5uo

Think they used balloons as turds only float in liquid? Apparently they weren’t allowed to go with there other plan of flooding the city and filling it with turds with the UK logo on them?

Retired_member41 · Jul 27, 2015

I think uk2 are doing .uk domains for a penny. Seems like a great deal.

namealot · Jul 27, 2015

Caz said:
I think uk2 are doing .uk domains for a penny. Seems like a great deal.

1p now full price next year? Why pay for the uk registration unless your selling etc until you have too????? Unless you like giving your cash away

Retired_member41 · Jul 27, 2015

I meant it would be good for new registrations, drops etc that you may want.

bonusmedia · Jul 27, 2015

Whoever is responsible for this advert is incompetent.

Nominet should stop playing at business and focus solely on providing the basic domain registration service.

Then they could cut registration and transfer fees and put millions back in the hands of actual competitive businesses.

bonusmedia · Jul 27, 2015

invincible said:
I believe we are very unlikely to ever see registration and renewal fees cut below what they currently are at the moment. New gTLDs are often priced substantially higher so registrars selling domain names with the option to give a multitude of extensions prominence on their web sites will favour the ones that offer them a greater return. You may be aware that Verisign will be increasing the wholesale price of .net by 10% in the near future. The perception of the new gTLDs that have given away registrations or offered them at rock bottom prices has not been positive. The trend in pricing is quite the reverse from downward.

Nominet do concentrate on providing the basic domain name service and they do it very well. I see little if any complaint about that. Their CS is constantly praised. Their system up times also.

In your opinion should Nominet not try to promote their UK product range at all and leave it up to their registrars?

(from iPhone)

If this advert is an example of their efforts then no, Nominet should not promote their 'product range'.

I am not complaining about the basic service.

.uk is a public service and a monopoly, not a speculative gTLD offered by a private company. ccTLDs are surely different.

.co.uk needs no promotion since it is ubiquitous. Spending millions promoting .uk is unlikely to have any impact compared with some sites actually using it, which will happen anyway.

It may well be that Nominet offers reasonable value for money compared with others - given their massive captive audience and enormous revenue. That's not an excuse to waste our money.

I'm no expert but it seems to me Nominet is not sure whether it's a quango, a business or a charity - and an awful lot of time and money is apparently spent on things which are not the basic business of running the registry.