If you are a regular NameJet user, you probably noticed a major change to the popular domain name auction platform’s home page last week. The change will make it easier for visitors to spot popular upcoming auctions.
The large search box in the center of the page with the rotating images of a race car, train, and runner has been removed. The calls to action to create an account, introduce the company and list domain names for sale have also been removed. Additionally, the less than useful categories section below the search box (on the left side) has been completely removed.
Here is a screenshot of how NameJet looked prior to the homepage redesign:
By removing the graphics from the homepage, NameJet is able to display a variety of upcoming auctions to visitors instead. NameJet now displays a list of upcoming private auctions, expiring domain name auctions, and public auctions. You can have a look at NameJet.com to see the changes, although I pasted a screenshot below for easier reference.
The search and search results pages, account management pages, and auction pages do not appear to have been changed much in this redesign. As I recall, there was a search box at the top of those pages, and it appears to have been removed on the search and search results pages. You can see the way it looked previously on this Archive.org page. This is how the top of the search pages look now:
I reached out to NameJet General Manager Jonathan Tenenbaum to learn more about the redesign, and here is what he told me:
“We recently reformatted the homepage of the NameJet website to better promote and market the numerous domains on our platform. With hundreds of thousands of domains moving through the platform each month, it is critical for us to be able to highlight and draw attention to as many of them as possible.
One of the most common requests we get from our customers is for better tools to help identify domains that they might be interested in. Since we had space on the homepage we were not adequately utilizing, we thought this presented a great opportunity to implement some positive changes.
A number of back-end improvements have also been made to the website to make it function more efficiently and to help us better manage the inventory. Overall, our developers did a terrific job with this effort and we believe our customers will be as happy with the results as we are!”
Information overload. Even Sedo has a clearer picture of structuring their inventory. NameJet features some great auctions – especially the ones that are exclusive drops – and deserves a better layout.
Glad they 86’d the pic with picks. A picture may be worth a thousand words but not if the words are domains.
Another 1990s website in the domain industry. Disgraceful.
In the domaining world, we are more interested in texts than graphics. I think NameJet has just realized that.