Cybele Negris
2007 was another amazing year at Webnames.ca. We had many milestones. We celebrated the 20th anniversary of the .CA domain extension which was founded by our own John Demco, we achieved three new service launches, grew our services, attained record breaking service standards achieved by our customer support department and still found time for much community involvement.
On May 14, 2007 we celebrated the 20th Anniversary of the .CA domain name founded by our very own John Demco. John’s story was featured on the cover of Vancouver Sun, the Vancouver Board of Trade Sounding Board, and BC Business Magazine. He was interviewed by AM 900 CHML radio in Hamilton, Ontario as well as Decima Reports. Even the world’s largest membership warehouse club chain Costco featured John in Costco Connections.
In the past year, Webnames.ca saw huge growth not just in domain registrations but in SSL certificates, webhosting and Web Builder, demonstrating that we are no longer merely a domain registrar. In 2007 we launched another three services to complement our growing suite of products and services. These include custom web design services, dedicated hosting (in addition to our shared hosting plans) as well as Webnames.ca Account Lock, a new IP security feature that no other registrar offers which secures a customer’s account by allowing login to their account to only specified IP addresses.
We achieved another year of exemplary service in customer support, achieving a 27 second average telephone response time in the month of October. Our response times have been consistently around 30 seconds for the past six months. We also implemented Live Chat in the month of October as another option for customers to reach us and get instant assistance when they need it. We added weekend and holiday support which is getting more popular with each passing month. Our Better Business Bureau record continues to have zero complaints year after year. And best of all, we took on 3 amazing and dedicated new staff members, Maxime in technical support, Kathryn in customer support and Hiroko as our office administrator. We’re in the process of another 2 new hires.
On the community side Webnames.ca management has been busy giving back. John Demco, founder of .CA in Canada became a permanent, ex-officio member of the board for the Canadian Internet Registration Authority where he has served as a board member since the inception of CIRA in 1999. Stephen Smith, CEO of Webnames.ca has been a mentor for new companies at New Ventures BC since 2006 and this year he started mentoring a new company under the Canadian Youth Business Foundation (CYBF). Stephen also founded and continues to manage the highly successful Flintbox organization which is an intellectual property matchmaking system that redefines how industry and research connect, interact, and exchange IP.
Personally I stepped down as President of Wired Woman Vancouver and handed things over to an amazing new team and then shortly thereafter joined the Board of the Forum for Women Entrepreneurs and took on Chair of the e-series committee. We are responsible for selecting the group of women entrepreneurs for the entrepreneurial training program and working to develop the training curriculum. I spoke at the Massive Technology Show in March about .MOBI and continue to receive excellent feedback. Slides of the show are available on Slideshare, the presentation suprisingly having been downloaded close to 900 times during the last 8 months.
Webnames.ca sponsored the 2007 Small Business BC Business Plan Contest and will be awarding the winners and participants prize packages of domain names and websites to showcase their businesses. I have been asked by Small Business BC to be a judge to choose the winner of the Business Plan Contest which closes December 2007. Webnames.ca also sponsored BC Innovation Council in 2007 and awarded over 70 high school students who were BC’s Regional Science Fair Winners who represented British Columbia at the annual national competition, websites to showcase their projects. Webnames.ca also sponsored the New Ventures BC Competition.
What’s ahead for 2008?
What’s ahead for 2008? Look for Webnames.ca to continue to grow, offer you new products and services, continued exemplary support and increased community involvement. Stay tuned. We’ve only just begun.