Is having a .com important for retail businesses
LanpartyComputers
subscriber Posts: 3
I was about to being working on a website for my computer retail business when I realized the the domain was already in use. Using a godaddy.com domain search I found out some of the owners personal information. After viewing the site I can pretty much say that it is inactive and has been that way for well over a year. The owner also has not responded to any of my emails nor have they called me back after I left them a voicemail.
This brings me to my real question. How important is it to have a .com as a retail business. Pretty much every other option was available except for .com. I would think that if someone came across the name it would be easier for them to remember a .com rather than a .net or .biz. What are your opinions on this? Would you say that it is slightly more difficult to market anything outside of a .com domain?
This brings me to my real question. How important is it to have a .com as a retail business. Pretty much every other option was available except for .com. I would think that if someone came across the name it would be easier for them to remember a .com rather than a .net or .biz. What are your opinions on this? Would you say that it is slightly more difficult to market anything outside of a .com domain?
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Also, on GoDaddy sometimes you see an option of "backordering a domain" and it was $18 or so to do so. Once it worked for me. This site for bra dryer was used by someone else when I was trying to register it at first. Later, I guess in a couple of months, I saw this "backorder" option, I paid for it and... forgot about it. Then all of a sudden I get an email from GoDaddy saying that this domain name is now mine.
I have to admit though that couple other times it did not work. But what I`m saying is that if you see this option then it might be worth trying to use it.
One more reason why you should stick to a unique name that it`s not registered in at least few zones, is because if your web site / business becomes a success then pretty soon some people will try to register domains same or similar to yours in other zones - for example if you have whatever.com, they will register whatever.net, whatever.biz, whatever.us and so on and put AdSence there. So if you get a cool domain name, register it in a couple zones at least.
del.iciou.us -- this one violates all the "rules" about domain names, yet it set the standard for web 2.0 domain naming conventions
Well this one, hopefully, is a passing trend. An annoying thing is happening these days when everyone starts to follow leaders in their category and copy things that make them stand out. Flickr for example, the way it`s spelled with 3 consonants in a row - well now everyone thinks it`s cool to do the same, so we have tumblr, enablr, gtalker probably flippr somewhere too, and so on. Same with del.icio.us, ma.gnolia.com - I`ve seen a number of same domain names, can`t remember any of them. Thing is that when you`re the first one AND you are successful, then that makes you cool - all the rest is poor imitation - uncool.
So my suggestion is - try to come up with a domain name that makes the most sense (and not to you - but to your users) that`s available and don`t experiment with these little tricks that might just make you look silly.
BTW here`s a piece of an article explaining the above a little bit:The flickr -r may well have started the game, but now completely
unrelated sites are becoming Web 2.0 by not including the written vowel
in words with syllabic endings. Pooln chose its site name over “Poolin”
or “Poolen”, tumblr over “tumbler”, and I suspect it’s only a matter of
time before the first sites ending in /l/ pop up (at the time of
writing, rumbl, tumbl and bumbl were already reserved). Interestingly,
I’m yet to see a syllabic M site (perhaps because we generally just
write the m with now vowel, as in “chasm” or “orgasm”). Who knows,
though, maybe “phantm” is the next Web 2.0 ghost hunting site (Source)infilta7/6/2008 7:45 PM
While I was there I also saw the option to backorder the domain. I figured that I might as well go on a backorder it.
That leads me to my next question. With the domain that I want for my business being registered already how should I go about choosing a name for my website? Should I try to think of something that people would type in while looking for a computer or should I stick to something creative?
Another way is what was already suggested - try to come up with an unrelated name. You won`t be able to keep your name in the domain but again, with little SEO initiative your domain will be the top result for your company name.
For any site that takes credit cards or PayPal, I would recommend a dot com. Unless it is a charity (.org), people just expect a dot com in my opinion.
I would think a bit out of the box and use something much shorter. That will be better anyway. Something like LANpartyGear.com. Tell people what you are offering if possible.
Hope that helps,
Andrew
That being said I would rather people know where they can get the best gaming computers. I`ll take a day and think over which route I`m going to take. Right now I`m leaning towards going with Lanparty-Computers.com. I`ve been reading up about SEO and I guess that the name isn`t as big of a deal. As long as I have good optimization I should get good exposure through search engines.
So, maybe one of the first steps is to consider what your targeted keyword(s) are... then choose/create a domain name around that.
If you`re marketing gaming computers.... another thought is to combine an action word with "computers". Or a common "gaming term" with computers? The idea is if you`re marketing to gamers... use "their language".
~Roland
If you`re marketing gaming computers.... another thought is to combine an action word with "computers". Or a common "gaming term" with computers? The idea is if you`re marketing to gamers... use "their language".
That was the motivation that was behind the name. Lanparty is a computer gaming term that means that computer gamers bring their computer together over a friends house or something and they play computer games over their home network. I figured that 1. Its a computer gamer term so computer gamers may relate to it and 2. It sounds fun so maybe even if you don`t know what the term means completely you can still get the idea that we represent fun with computers. After all, what sounds more fun than party?