Smartphones revolutionized the internet consumption in an unprecedented manner. The average time spent on internet is 2.8 hours a day on mobile and 2.4 hours on desktop (average, US adults) according to a very recent, comprehensive study. Moreover, 89% of the mobile time is consumed via apps. So an average adult spends 2.5 hours on the net using mobile apps in the States.
But what about domainers? OK, of course social-minded domainers might have Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc. apps installed but I mean what about specialized applications for domainers? One would think that domaining is for open-minded tech gurus, so there are a lot of outstanding applications out there built by and built for domainers. This is not the case, unfortunately.
Disappointments
1, There is no NameJet app for Android and having 2 stars on App Store, one can think that the iPhone app is worse than nothing. It would be so useful to have a working NameJet app with push notifications. If I forgot about a domain that I really want and someone outbids me in the last 5 minutes, it would be a way better option to act fast than getting their email when it is too late already.
2, SnapNames has an app for both Android and iPhone. It is installed on my phone but I should remove it already. It is absolutely useless at the moment, even logging in is a challenge for the app.
3, Whois app. Why is it so difficult to build an good app doing Whois search? Maybe this one is the best but please DomainTools, build an app for domainers that knows everything about the life of the domains.
Runner-ups
1, Alexa app does not add anything what one can see on the mobile website but at least exists and a bit more comfortable for frequent Alexa visitors. The app was downloaded more than 50,000 times for Android only!
2, Namebio is one of the best site for domainers and I would be more than happy to use it via an app. Unfortunately instead of making Namebio for Android, Michael came out with The Domain Game. UPDATE: As he pointed out in his comment, than app served more than half million questions so far.
3, GoDaddy Investor app is the best available app among the domain auction marketplaces. But the competitors’ apps are so terrible that it does not mean that this app is any close to the perfect. You cannot browse domains, search for domains, only watch those you bid on your desktop computer. As a positive note, it is very convenient to quick check auction standings here. Although not the domains you are selling, because this feature is also missing. Who would think that it was downloaded almost 100,000 times (Android and iPhone combined)?
Winners
There is no winner app for domainers at the moment.
It seems that everyone think that the market is too small for developing an app. Another possible reason of missing or nonfunctional mobile applications is the monopoly situation some company has on its field. Anyhow, it is disappointing that domaining, a prospective industry is years behind the current technology.
We have nearly one thousand players of The Domain Game and have served up more than half a million questions. Considering the small size of the industry and how long the app has been out, I would say it has been well-received. While it is meant to help educate beginners, even seasoned investors have said it helped them become better appraisers.
I have personally played it quite a bit, almost an embarrassing amount, but I only do so because I can feel my gut reactions becoming better and faster by the day. I’m not just saying that because I’m biased 🙂 Even though there are few people in the industry who have seen as much sales data as I have, when I first started playing I quickly found out that I had a *lot* to learn.
I don’t really see much point in making a NameBio app that doesn’t add any value to our existing site, which is mobile friendly and loads quickly. The usability gains would be limited over our existing site, our mobile traffic is small because not many people are doing this kind of research on their phone (mostly avail checks and auction bidding), and it would be very expensive to create.
I definitely agree that auction houses should have better apps, especially NameJet and SnapNames. They make a lot of money, and are losing a lot of money by not having a good experience, so I don’t know what they’re waiting for. Flippa has a solid app, have you tried it?
While the GoDaddy app is great for bidding, as you said it is really unfortunate that you can’t browse domains on it, especially considering that their mobile site is terrible. Every time you click to load more domains on their mobile site it jumps to the top of the page, meaning you lose your place and have to scroll a ton trying to find it, so it is basically unusable. I pointed this out to them more than a year ago but nothing has been done even though it is a quick fix.
Michael, thank you for your valuable comment! It is great to know that your domain game is quite popular, I’ve updated the post accordingly. I think the problem here is that a domain has so many value parameter besides its name, so if my guess is wrong, I will blame the game not me 🙂 A totally wrong guess might mean that the domain is deindexed by Google or had a PageRank 8 earlier or sold with a business etc. The same difficulty that Estibot has. But I see that you try to focus on the best names where the name itself is the main contributing factor in the value, so you bring the most out of it.
As for your other comments. We are involved in the mobile app field, so I am maybe a bit biased but I think every good website has to develop an app independently how mobile friendly that website is; especially because more and more desktops use Android as an operating system – having a Namebio icon on a Remix OS desktop is much more convenient than any responsive design. But from a business viewpoint I can understand that you will only start a costly development when considerable amount of your users are using tablet or Android PC.
You are right that Flippa app deserves a mention, I will add it to the list.