Chris Sheridan
Head of Channel Sales — WEEBLY
Twitter | LinkedIn
FAST FACTS
Session Name: Best Practices Selling Domains Through Hosting
Location: Chicago, IL
Number of years in the domain industry: 18 years
Favourite extension: .co
Domain name you wished you owned: sheridan.com
Now reading: Chaos Monkeys
Now watching: WestWorld
Best city for conferences: Las Vegas, NV!
Q&A
Describe your company and how long you have been there.
I have been at Weebly for two years. Weebly is a global platform allowing entrepreneurs to easily create a website, blog, or e-commerce store. In 2015, we launched our Weebly Cloud platform. Weebly Cloud allows any web host, telco, domain registrar, or domain registry to resell Weebly services to their customer base. Two years later we now have 200+ partners globally!
What can attendees look forward to during your session?
The market is evolving for selling domains, websites, and other critical online services. I think the drive to simplify the on-boarding process continues and there is still more opportunity to improve.
What would you like attendees to learn or take away from your session?
I would hope attendees walk away with a better sense of the current trends that are impacting domain name sales, hosting sales, and website sales.
Can you tell us about how your service or product helps deliver value to your customers?
Weebly is focused on solving the top three areas entrepreneurs, SMBs, and retail customers look for when preparing to go online:
– Ease of Use (At Weebly this primarily accomplished with our drag n drop editor and intuitive interface)
– Mobile Access (Weebly addresses this through offering Responsive Themes and robust iOS and Android apps)
– eCommerce (We are continuing to invest in the fast growing ecommerce space and have just introduced more plans + features in October)
Can you tell us about your last time at NamesCon and what you got out of it?
I attended the January 2016 conference. It was the first time Weebly attended and exhibited. It was a great show — we solidified a number of key partnerships at that show. It will be great to reconnect with our existing resellers and also meet news ones in January 2017.
NamesCon is all about business networking. Can you tell us a story about the success of a meeting at NamesCon?
I think Namescon makes it very easy to network and meet new people. To me, this is the main goal of the event organizers. When I attended last year, we were very focused on meeting with a number of domain registrars. We also had a number of good meeting with New TLD registries that resulted in new business. Some of these include: XYZ Registry, dotVegas, and Top Level Design. This was one of the best results of the show!
What are your thoughts on the new TLDs?
I have been in the domain space for over 15 years. I remain excited about the opportunity for new TLDs.
What kinds of changes do you foresee within the industry in the next five years?
Accelerated consolidation across registrars and new TLD registries.
What are you most looking forward to at the upcoming NamesCon?
Networking and reconnecting with some good friends and colleagues.
What industry trends or topics do you think will be at the forefront of panel and keynote discussions this year?
Industry consolidation will be a big topic.
Who would you like to hear speak at NamesCon?
Bring back Bob Parsons!
What fact about you would surprise people?
I lived in London for 2 years and Sydney, Australia for almost one year.
What was one of your biggest “Aha!” moments in life?
When I found out that .coop was a real TLD.
How does your career compare to what you envisioned in your youth?
I was going to be a journalist. 🙂
How would you describe what you do in a single sentence to a stranger?
Websites!!!
If you had fifteen extra minutes each day, what would you do with them?
Nap.
What’s the most recent thing you learned?
Never agree to be part of an RRp -> EPP project
Latest and greatest accomplishment in your career?
I’m really enjoying Weebly!
Name three things you can’t travel without.
Spotify, cellphone and laptop.
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