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Revamping GoDaddy’s Domain Ownership Protection

A $22M product that protected millions of domains, but never showed it. Here's how making protection visible transformed trust, engagement, and revenue.

role

Lead Product Designer

timeline

11 months · phased

scope

End-to-end · 0→1 features

impact

$677K+ annualized revenue

the paradox of protection.

Protection feels invisible… until the day it isn't.

DOP quietly blocked domain hijacking, accidental loss, and email spoofing for ~9 million domains and $22M in annualized revenue. But users couldn't see it working. No proof. No activity. Just silence.

When protection is silent, users don't feel safe, the cost does not feel justified. 67% of DOP support calls were about unclear value. Users cancelled at renewal not because the product failed them, but because they never knew it was working.

DOP quietly blocked domain hijacking, accidental loss, and email spoofing for ~9 million domains and $22M in annualized revenue. But users couldn't see it working. No proof. No activity. Just silence.

When protection is silent, users don't feel safe, the cost does not feel justified. 67% of DOP support calls were about unclear value. Users cancelled at renewal not because the product failed them, but because they never knew it was working.

DOP quietly blocked domain hijacking, accidental loss, and email spoofing for ~9 million domains and $22M in annualized revenue. But users couldn't see it working. No proof. No activity. Just silence.

When protection is silent, users don't feel safe, the cost does not feel justified. 67% of DOP support calls were about unclear value. Users cancelled at renewal not because the product failed them, but because they never knew it was working.

at a glance.

+

522
522

%

relative lift in discoverability

1.58% → 12.42% · +1M clicks/yr

Annualized DOP revenue

~81.5K units annually

+$

532

K

+

0
0

%

relative conversions at renewal

2.75% → 4.69% · ~43.5K incremental orders/yr

+$

532

K

Annualized DOP revenue

~56.4K units annually

*All numbers from controlled A/B experiments run by GoDaddy's analytics team

the problem.

DOP was silently working. Users just had no idea.
Nobody could find it. Nobody understood it.

🔍 Invisible by design

Worked constantly, never surfaced its work. No proof it existed.

📍Difficult to navigate

Protection activity buried in account-level Tools — not where users looked.

🗣 A language nobody spoke

Technical logs and raw event tables meant nothing to an SMB owner.

💸 Impossible to justify

When you can't see or understand a product, paying for it stops making sense.

the approach.

Four phases.
One compounding thesis.

Each phase built on the last. Perceived value compounds when users can see, understand, and act on their protection.

1

Discoverability

Surface protection where users already are

2

Comprehension

Turn confusing copy into clear reassurance

3

Simplification

Re-mould complex data into digestible formats

4

Expansion

Add features that show protection in action

phase 01 · discoverability

Moving protection to
to where users actually are

The Activity Log, DOP's only proof of work was buried under Domain Portfolio → Tools, built for domain investors, invisible to the Small Business Owners. It was relocated it to a dedicated tab on every domain page.

The Activity Log, DOP's only proof of work was buried under Domain Portfolio → Tools, built for domain investors, invisible to the Small Business Owners. It was relocated it to a dedicated tab on every domain page.

First
Second
Before
After
First
Second
Before
After

phase 02–03 · comprehension & simplification

From a language nobody spoke
to one anyone could read

Placement solved discoverability. But what users found was still cold, incomplete, written for systems not people. Every state was re-written and the data was restructured entirely.

  1. Zero state: rewriting silence as safety

Same information. Completely different feeling.

First
Second
Before
After

  1. Activity Log: from wall of data to digestible buckets

Same information. Completely different feeling.

First
Second
Before
After

phase 04 · expansion

Growing domain protection
New features · New touchpoints · New flows

✨

Features

Added DMARC and DNS Protection insights, two threat surfaces users had limited visibility into before.

✨

Features

Added DMARC and DNS Protection insights, two threat surfaces users had limited visibility into before.

✨

Touchpoints

Brought DOP into domain renewal, the moment users are already thinking about their domain's future.

✨

Touchpoints

Brought DOP into domain renewal, the moment users are already thinking about their domain's future.

✨

Flows

Redesigned how users manage their DOP plans, making plan coverage clearer and more accessible.

✨

Flows

Redesigned how users manage their DOP plans, making plan coverage clearer and more accessible.

what I learned.

Decisions that
moved the needle

01

Perception is part of the product

A product that works but feels like nothing will get cancelled. Perceived value isn't a nice-to-have, it's a retention strategy.

02

Structural decisions are design decisions

The best design work I did wasn't just on the screen, it was moving the Activity Log to domain level, which made every expansion that followed architecturally possible.

03

Sequence is strategy

Each phase created conditions for the next. The order mattered as much as the work itself.

outcome.

Transformed GoDaddy’s Domain Ownership Protection from an invisible background feature into a visible, trusted part of the domain experience, reinforcing the company’s promise of peace of mind for millions of small-business customers.