In 2011, GoDaddy lost 72,000 customers in one month. What can we learn from the evolution of the GoDaddy brand, and the importance and impact of the first impression that we make with our site visitors?
Founded in 1997, GoDaddy spent the first decade as the infamous, cringe-worthy brand associated with risqué marketing tactics featuring a trademarked GoDaddy Girl®. Perhaps a brilliant strategy for early growth, the approach nevertheless alienated a large part of the potential target audience, and certainly presented a blocker to customer loyalty. In a 2011 Harvard Business Review case study, the authors describe the tenuous nature of GoDaddy’s brand love, as evidenced by a mass exodus of 72,000 customers in the course of one month. Although popular, the brand was tolerated rather than loved.
The customer revolt in 2011 happened around the same time as a private equity injection of capital into the business. With that, came the expected mandate to scale and grow – and thus began a decade long evolution of the vibe, visuals and value proposition of the brand.
In 2010, the value proposition of GoDaddy was focussed on their core business, “Domains for $1.99”, endorsed by a jacket clad GoDaddy Girl®. The brand’s logo looked visually unchanged since 2001: the “quirky” (some say creepy) dude with green glasses continued to promise “hot” prices. The visuals start to change gradually in the next year, with 2012 seeing a transition in messaging to “searching for a domain”, departing from the focus on “hot” pricing and cheap domains. While the GoDaddy Girl® is now also customer, and the words take a step away from “hotness”, we continue to witness ever plunging necklines and raunchy Super Bowl ads featuring the GoDaddy Girl®. The mixed messaging confuses the public, with the general opinion of the brand reported as “Eyyyyyyeh”, somewhere between indifference and distaste.
A new CEO enters the scene, and with that, leads the brand to a new maturity. By 2013, the messaging changes significantly: GoDaddy is now the place to “Easily create a professional website”. GoDaddy Girl ® is retired and replaced by very ordinary and relatable small business blokes, Roland Payne and E.Z Smith.
GoDaddy IPOs in 2015. By 2017, the brand has become almost generic in terms of the visual identity but remains focussed in their messaging “Build a better website in under an hour”. The creepy mascot is dropped from the logo around 2018, and the business is now squarely focussed on appealing to a much larger small business market.
In 2020, GoDaddy re-launches their logo – loved by some, criticised by others as being a close copy to that of AirBnB. While differences of opinion abound regarding the design aesthetic, the brand successfully completes the transition from tasteless and alienating, to professional and helpful. GoDaddy becomes a brand that is loved by over 19.3 million customers around the globe, reflecting 11.5% revenue growth between 2019 and 2020, and a 40% increase in ecommerce sales.
The evolution of the GoDaddy brand image and message worked for several reasons:
If your brand is losing business to competing firms, and you notice that the time on site for your website is relatively low, you can improve your chances of success by investing in your Ten Second milestone in three easy ways: