New Top Level Domains Offer Creativity and Confusion

by | May 16, 2016 | Digital Marketing | 0 comments

New Top Level Domains

Top level domains are something that you see every day but probably never knew or cared to know what they were called. Simply, they are the .com’s and .edu’s at the end of every web site address. Generally, businesses have always sought to get a good .com address. Some businesses utilize the less frequently seen .biz, .net, or .us top level domains. Especially, if their desired .com domain is taken.

For our full recommendations on TLD selection strategy, check out our website domain name recommendations.

In recent years, The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, has released a significant number of new top level domains that offer businesses the opportunity to create a unique and original domain name. As of this writing, there are over 1,300 top level domains available. A list of the most notable can be found on Wikipedia and ICANN posts updates regularly on their site.

Room for Creativity and Confusion

With new TLD’s like .beer, .attorney, .finance, and .fitness, the possibilities are endless. If you have a taxi service, you can create ineeda.taxi link to your online reservation system. Opening a new leasing company? How about pittsburgh.rentals? (this domain is taken BTW) Pretty cool right? We think so.

There is one significant problem. If you give someone your website address, and say, “My website is mtlebanon.dentist” most likely they are going to type in mtlebanondentist.com. The fact is, .com addresses have been around for so long, our brains default to using them. It’s partially why .biz domain names are less valuable than their .com counterparts.

Be Creative but Anticipate User Error

Our recommendation to our clients is to nail down their primary domain name via a .com TLD and use the newer generic TLD’s for promotions and as forwarding domains for now.

For instance, our domain name is www.snap-fwd.com. If we have a golf outing that we wish to promote, we may create a snapforward.golf landing page to promote our event. We may also create a TLD that forwards to our main address and, as customers begin to become familiar with the new domain naming strategy, begin to use it on our promotional and marketing material.

Be prepared to have to explain the name to someone that may not understand the new naming convention. You may have to say, “no .com at the end” more than you like. However, on a positive note, it may create some sort of stickiness with people if they have to think about it a little bit.

 

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