GaragePowered

Do I need a .com

Must a website for your business be a .com, or can a .net, .org or one of the other tlds be sufficient?

When you are starting out, the majority visitor will come to your site either via a search engine or a link from another website, and once they know your site will probably use a bookmark in their browser rather than typing in the name in the browsers address bar. So your .com, .org, .net will have little impact on your traffic.

Once your business becomes a huge success you may start advertising more on radio, television and in print. The .com issue may now become relevant, as a matter of branding and the level of type in traffic grows.

When typing in a domain name, some users will assume the site has is a .com, which may result in some lost traffic if your the .com is owned by someone else. Some of those users may still attempt to find your site via a search engine, but any extra steps required by your users is one step too many.

The majority of good .com names have long been registered though and if you try and purchase them could cost a hefty sum. If you don’t find an unregistered .com that works for your business you have to ask yourself is it work the extra cost to buy and .com, you could start with a .net or .og and later rename yourself to a better .com.

There are definitely benefits to having a .com, but I wouldn’t recommend sinking huge amounts of money into getting the perfect one right from the beginning. Even if you have go with a a slightly less desirable name to start and re-brand (and redirect) later your business should not be harmed.

Tags: domains

This entry was posted on Monday, October 6th, 2008 at 11:46 am and is filed under Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.