If you are currently searching for the right domain name and adding ‘.com’ in the end of each domain idea, you might end up disappointed, finding out that all domains you type are already booked. That’s not a coincidence because, with a huge expansion of internet business and the fact that most people choose ‘.com’ abbreviations over all other and we are currently witnessing a big shortage of ‘.com’ domains.
So what should we do now?
Should we choose ‘.net’, ‘.org’ or ‘.co’? Of course not! One of the reasons why ‘.com’ domains are so popular is because people type them by automation. This means that huge percentage of your visitors will end up on the website of lucky ‘.com’ owner, each time they don’t pay attention what they are typing in the address bar. Since there’s a huge possibility that the lucky ‘.com’ owner is your main business rival, this small typing mistake can have horrific consequences on your brand.
That’s why you definitely need to think about a completely different domain. Good news is that now there are hundreds of different domain abbreviations that range from ‘.sucks’ to ‘.fun’ and cover all website niches you can think of. With such a long list of abbreviations, who needs ‘.com’ domains anyway, when you can construct your own domain phrase that explains your company’s business in simple terms and contains one or few keywords that your future customers will use in Google Search. Great example for the usefulness of these alternative domain names is .me domain. This abbreviation is very adaptable and it can easily be turned into a catchy phrase like: join.me, love.me, hate.me or name.me.
People don’t like surprises
People generally don’t like surprises, especially when surfing the web. That’s why pop-ups are such widely hated and the invention of pop-blockers considered as one of the biggest tech advancements, after the invention of mobile internet.
With this in mind, your website need to fulfill visitor’s expectations they had after reading your domain name. So if your domain name is: ‘businessadvice.com’ and it leads to a porn website, your visitors definitely won’t visit it again (at least not when their boss is around). That’s why you need to choose keywords that describe your business in the best possible way. Of course domains like Monster.com or Amazon.com, doesn’t sound like places where you will find resumes and goods. These companies invested millions of dollars in building their brands, so domains that sound misleading won’t hurt their business. On the other hand small businesses that just went through process of incorporation can easily be ruined by these non-transparent domain names.
Other important criteria for domain name choosing
Since domain is such an important part of online business equation, there are dozens of other parameters you should have in mind when choosing it. Domain name should be:
- Short– short names are easy to remember and type;
- Easy to type– they shouldn’t contain complicated strings of letters like ‘x’, ‘z’, ‘c’, ‘w’,etc.
- Easy to remember– this way your domain would benefit from word-to-mouth marketing;
- Original- copyright infringements lead to penalties and lawsuits;
- It shouldn’t follow silly trends– don’t make grammar errors or misspell your words just because some big brands are doing it;
- It shouldn’t contain numbers– they can confuse website visitors;
One of the biggest problems when it comes to domains is huge number of people and companies who work as domain middlemen. They buy good domains and sell them for much higher prices. That’s why you might end up disappointed when seeing that your perfect ‘.com’ domain can be bought for ‘only’ $50,000, from some domain reseller. This is just one of the reasons why website administrators will shift more and more towards creative domain phrases and soon ‘.coms’ will become available again.
