In September, SIDN conducted a survey of .nl registrants to find out what they thought of the new transfer procedure for domain names. For the survey, we approached ten thousand registrants who had transferred a domain name since the new transfer procedure’s introduction on 17 March 2010. More than 1,800 of the people we contacted completed the questionnaire. The results of the survey are described below.
The overall mark given to the new transfer procedure was 7.9 out of ten. Of the registrants who responded, 80 per cent said that the switch had gone smoothly and that they regarded the procedure as very secure. Nearly three quarters of the transfers had gone through without any support from the registrar or from SIDN. The registrants were very pleased with the support provided by their registrars, giving it an average mark of 7.6 out of ten.
Improvements
Two points were identified as needing further attention: the arrangements for issuing tokens and the length of the process. The registrants who had experienced problems getting hold of tokens were significantly less satisfied with the transfer process than the others – the average mark given by these registrants was 6.8. One possible cause of the problems with tokens is that 70 per cent of all tokens are sent out by e-mail … and unfortunately e-mail addresses are not always kept up to date.
Registrants are often frustrated by the length of time it takes to transfer a domain name. Many of our respondents said that it ought to be possible to complete a transfer within 24 hours.
In light of the survey findings, and the feedback received from a separate poll of registrars, SIDN is looking into the possibility of making changes to the transfer procedure.