Choosing a domain may not be as easy you think.
A poorly chosen domain could spell t-r-o-u-b-l-e for your business.
Many people mistype things. Never having taught myself to type correctly, my fingers dart about the keyboard extremely fast, but with no efficiency. As a result, I can hit all the right letters, but not necessarily in the right order
Yesterday, I needed to visit the Apple site. I thought I typed Apple. Yet, the difference of only one letter caused me to end up somewhere different, where some canny but unscrupulous dealer had filled the page with links to various mp3 retailers to catch some of that misdirected iPod traffic.
It was the poor brand imitation of the copycat site and my familiarity with the official Apple online store that alerted me to the mistake. But consider if this happened with your business. Would a first time visitor know they were in the wrong place if someone built a copycat website using a similar name and promoting a similar product or service?
Could another business gain some of your traffic - and sales - by virtue of a similar domain name? Could a poorly branded and spam filled website, just a single letter away from your genuine site, damage your online reputation?
What if your business is a kids toy shop and the neighbour site is pornographic? BIG TROUBLE!
"But that's MY business name!"
When choosing domains, the first instinct is to simply look up your business name and grab it. Yet, with millions of domains registered around the world, many business owners may find their ideal domain name has already been taken by someone else.
As an Australian business, you may be content to only have the .au domain for your brand. But should your business ever want to expand into international territories, the inability to register the relevant domains in other countries may present problems.
Conflicting domains can also cause customer confusion. How many customers will visit the .com name instead of your .com.au and give their business unaware of the mix-up?
The domain search is now quite commonly part of those initial discussions to ensure the brand is differentiated sufficiently from others and all the appropriate domains are available.
If you are one of the majority of businesses that doesn't consider a domain until much later, you may need to weigh up a few considerations:
- Are there similar brand names that already exist on the web?
- Is there a risk of confusion should a visitor arrive on the wrong site?
- Can a variation be found that is available in all key territories? (For example, reformonline.com.au instead of reform.com.au)
- Is there a risk of misspelling the domain and are those names also available for you to register and safeguard?
There will not be any black and white answer to how to deal with these issues, should they arise. A business needs to consider the impact of each of these factors and develop compromises that allow the strongest domain strategy to protect and spread the brand.
Keeping control over domains
One thing remains true, when registering domains for a business, it is imperative you ensure that the email address used will always remain under your control and that the administrative details are yours. We at The Web Designer often secure everything for our clients in one consolidated place and act as custodian and key contact for their domain, even though all rights lie with our client.
Contact us for more information
Trading domains
For years, .au domains were left out from the domain aftermarket as transfers were highly restricted. However, the Australian Domain name Authority (auDA) relaxed these conditions in 2008, allowing Aussie domain owners to finally extract a true value from these important assets.
This has led to sites such as Netfleet.com.au enabling Australian domain owners to buy and sell domains at prices set by the market. You may not have a need for your domain, but you may find someone is willing to pay a lot of money for it. In the United States, this is referred to as virtual real estate.
Every day, hundreds of domains expire. Why not sell them through Netfleet and see how much you can get? Even if it only achieves its registration cost back, it has paid for itself.
Tactics for better domains
Domain names are the cornerstone of your online business and you need to plan and consider your domains carefully.
Here are some useful tactics:
- Register multiple domains;
- Distinguish your domains from the competition;
- Consider ease of memory, misspellings and typos;
- Avoid administrative mistakes that can lose you control;
- Trademark your business name; and
- Trade surplus domains for a profit instead of letting them lapse.
How many domains?
It is simple to redirect domains to point to the same website so people who misspell, them or forget the .au are not left staring at an error message.
You may never use these additional domains or you may choose to redirect them to your website, but by registering these domains, you protect the brand from others deliberately or accidentally grabbing them and creating confusion.
Consider that reformclothing.com.au, reformclothing.co.uk, reform.com and reformclothing.asia all point to the master domain of reform.com.au