Category: Domain Names

Domain Name Nightmares

Posted on By Andy Poulton

I was reading the news a couple of weeks ago and was delighted to learn of a mobile pizza maker. Based in South Wales, they have their van, a wood fired pizza oven and serving counters and were ready to go. Providing wonderful, freshly baked pizza at a wide variety of locations. Parties, gigs, weddings etc.

Tasty slice of pizza. Not from the Welsh Italian Pizza Company
Tasty slice of pizza

Who was it? The Welsh Italian Pizza Company, that’s who. So why were they in the news?

For a lack of thought. They simply decided to use the company name as their web domain without looking at it in print first. Say it – the Welsh Italian Pizza Company, sounds OK doesn’t it. Now look at it, as they registered it for their website – https://welshitalianpizza.co.uk

All of a sudden their pizzas look a lot less appetising.

They are not the first to have fallen in to this domain name nightmare. It’s so easy to choose a new domain name, register it, build a website and start the marketing. However, if you don’t look at your domain name in print AND talk about it first you could find your self with something as problematic as the Welsh Italian Pizza’s

Phones4U logo

Something that looks good, or cool, in print may not sound so smart and something that sounds clever may not look like a wise decision when written down. I think I first thought about it when Phones4U (remember them) started really pushing their mobile phone stores. It looked cool in print, tapping in to the shortening of words that the young had chanced on so that they could make the most of the limited characters allowed in SMS messages (maximum 140 back in the day). It tapped in to the zeitgeist of the time. But imagine trying to communicate the domain name in a phone call. “Yes, just visit our website at ‘phones’ – with a PH not an F – unlike that other giant, Vodafone. 4, that’s the number four, the digit, not the word and U, the letter U not the word, dot com”

All of a sudden, something simple has become quite a mouthful and quite challenging to communicate. Thankfully, Phones4U were able to throw a vast amount of money at advertising, which must have gone someway towards overcoming this challenge. However, it didn’t stop them from falling in to administration in 2014.

Then there’s award winning, London based video maker, producer and director. He called his business Speed of Art, so went for https://speedofart.com. Not quite so clever now, although I don’t think the owner really cares because, the last time I looked, he’d retired. Not only is there a problem with the domain name, but part of his target market was large organisations and many of them would use filters to prevent employees looking at unsuitable websites. The speedo bit would be OK but I don’t think the rest would get through the filter.

There’s a London based Cloud computing accountancy solutions provider caller XERO (pronounced Zero). Yep, looks good in print but in their radio adverts they have to say “visit us at Xero.com with an X”, and then sound out the spelling, “X.E.R.O. dot com”.

There are loads more. However probably the worst was for a Californian therapy/therapist directory because everybody in California needs a therapist, right? But how do you find one? Well, you go the therapist directory website https://therapistfinder.com don’t you? Thankfully, they spotted their error (although not until a couple of years had passed) and changed it to https://therapist-finder.com, although the site is now defunct.

Along the way there have been some excellent spoofs too. There was the Italian Electricity Generating company, PowergenItalia.com. This was claimed to be genuine for a number of years but was eventually shown up to be a spoof. And finally, for now, corporate pen company, Pen Island who sell through https://penisland.net

Pen Island Pens

Domain names like this not only distract from the marketing but also cause SEO confusion because the search engines have to guess the words from the alphabet-soup of letters and yet the solution is simple, use a hyphen or two, and the intention is immediately visible, speed-of-art.com and pen-island.net for example.

The moral of this post is simple, when thinking of a new domain name, make sure that it looks good in print and is easy to communicate verbally and if it’s not, then go back to the drawing board.

I might not be able to undo any domain names that you have registered but I can certainly help with the majority of internet marketing issues that you have, so why not give me a call on 01793 238020 or 07966 547146, drop me a line, andy@enterprise-oms.co.uk or book a free 40 minute consultancy session for an informal and free chat about your issues and how I may be able to help.

Domain Name Nightmares Pt 2

Posted on By Andy Poulton
WWW representing the World Wide Web

Domain names, essential for your web presence. Ideally they should look good, sound good and properly represent your business. But not everybody gets it right.

I last wrote about Domain Name Nightmares in 2014, looking at how easy it was to make an absolute pigs ear of your online presence if you weren’t careful. How difficult can it be, after all, all you have to do is think of a name, just think of something and Bob’s your dad’s brother.

But it’s not quite that simple. If you don’t pay attention to how your domain name will be shared then there’s a whole pit of vipers waiting for you. At the bare minimum you need to see how your chosen name looks in print AND listen to how it sounds when being shared verbally. Why? Well, way before 2014 I was sharing some absolute howlers with delegates to my SEO workshops, domains that were both funny and cringeworthy at the same time, and things haven’t really moved on much.

Some of the examples of Domain Name Nightmares back then were real and some were spoofs. How about TherapistFinder, a directory site for therapists in California. Once they understood how easily it could be misconstrued they changed it to Therapist-Finder.com after a couple of years.

Then there was Powergenitalia.com (later proved to be a spoof site) and Pen Island, a site (apparently) selling promotional pens with the unfortunate domain name of penisland.net. Easily solved with a hyphen, Pen-Island.net or simple capitalisation, PenIsland, when representing the domain in print.

Pen Island Pens logo

And another, there’s the website for finding theatrical agents. Imagine, you want to see who represents your favourite star, or you are looking to break in to the industry. You might turn to a site called Who Represents. However, if you only saw the web address, you might think they were offering something different, a more “adult” service if you like. whorepresents.com

There are many more but I’m going to finish with speedofart.com – a site for a successful video director that would have benefitted from hyphens for visual clarity speed-of-art.com. Now, it looks much clearer in print but suffers, conversationally, when networking for example. “My website, yes, it’s at speed hyphen of hyphen art dot com. Yes, that’s hyphen as in dash, not an underscore“.

I imagine that all of these sites, excluding the spoof ones, came about either because someone simply took a pre-existing business name and went for the option that they felt made most sense, without giving it due consideration or picked something that either sounded great OR looked great in print but did not consider both options.

The problem has never really gone away, I was reminded of it a couple of years ago when I was listening to a commercial radio station and heard an advert for a web based service. The were (and still are) a Cloud based company. The brand was promoted, the benefits proclaimed and, right at the end, there was the pitch which involved the the company’s domain name. It was spoken and then spelled out – just to make sure people reached the right website.

It was for the business software vendor Xero (pronounced Zero.com) so the ad ended with “visit ZERO.com, that’s X E R O dot com”. Not only does the listener have to remember the brand but they have to remember that its not spelled the way it sounds.

Recently I’ve been hearing ads for a website that makes it easier for businesses to find Council, NHS and Government contracts. The web address is opportuni.com, a combination of letters that looks quite good in print but fails conversationally. We are used to the word Opportunity but Opportuni just doesn’t sound right, so, again, at the end of the ad the domain name has to be spelled out in the hope that people will either remember it or write it down.

Two women with a Chromebook

And there’s more. Finance site Cufflink, well that’s what it sounds like during the ad, it’s only when they get to the end that they say “Cufflink, that’s KUFLINK.com. So, again. if you are interested, not only do you have to remember a word that is unfamiliar to many but you have to remember the unconventional spelling, not only has the C been replaced by a K but there’s only one F.

And I’m not even going to make much of Gollgi, Click, sorry Qlik or Clear, sorry Klear and I’m sure there are loads of others that I’ve not heard of

So, please, when choosing a name for your new business, or when planning on launching a new brand, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE give due consideration to your web address. Think about how it looks in print and how easy is it to share, in a memorable way, with people who are unfamiliar with what you do. Remember, there’s a danger in trying to be too KlevR.

And if you need help with web addresses or with anything else to do with your internet activity please, don’t hesitate to get in touch. Call me on 01793 238020, email andy@enterprise-oms.co.uk or just search Chief SEO Officer

Do you use a .EU domain?

Posted on By Andy Poulton
MAshup of Union and EU flags, Image result for brexit

Brexit was always going to have problems and issues for businesses but none expected it to have an impact on business domain names.

Well, until Easter 2018 anyway, which was when a major problem for businesses was announced in well known and respected technology news site, The Register.

You probably chose your .EU domain for a really good reason, you want the world to know that either you are an EU-based business or your market is the EU, for example.

Brexit and the .EU domain

However, as a result of Brexit, the EU has announced that all .EU domains registered by UK businesses (and individuals) will be revoked on B-Day (Brexit Day) 31st March 2018

What this means is that if you are one of the 300,000 UK organisations or individuals who has registered a .EU domain you might well see your website disappear overnight.

Obviously, continental domain registrars may well take advantage of this, offering to take on your domain and “fix” the problem for a (presumably large) fee, but that also has issues. The European Commission has hinted it is unhappy with that arrangement too; they will no longer allow you to own an .eu domain (that’s their whole point), so you are putting yourself at some commercial risk (similar to not owning IP in any products you make), and the EU is legally bound to prefer “the good of the EU” in any contractual dispute. Thankfully though, there are alternatives:

What’s in a (domain) name?

It’s not just your web site that could be affected, your email system, security certificates for encryption and e-commerce, and possibly even remote access to company assets for sales staff might be impacted too.

It will vary, obviously, depending on how you are set up, but checking this now is very sensible.

Perhaps the best approach is to do two things

  1. Immediately register a suitable .UK domain, and
  2. Point your .EU web traffic to it as soon as possible.

You have a choice of .uk domain name, and you can still represent your EU connection in it, if that’s crucial. For example,

bloggs-transport.eu

might change to,

bloggs-transport-eu.uk

We realise this isn’t ideal, but the second name is safe as it can’t be affected by any disruption the EU Commission might cause. You would have normal rights to the name, under English law, and, if it’s done right, there’s almost a whole year for your clients to get used to your new URL. Thus the risk is minimised, and it becomes one aspect of Brexit that can’t hurt you further commercially.

If this change goes ahead—and this is much more likely than unlikely in our opinion—you have less than a year for clients to become used to the change. This isn’t something to hesitate over: the implication is that no redirection will be possible after 31st March 2019, so at that point your site will simply vanish off the internet. People may even think you’ve gone bust!

Right now, you have enough time for this NOT to become an expensive issue. The longer you leave this one, the more electronic business disruption is likely to cost you come Brexit day.

If you have a .eu domain and you are worried, please get in touch: 01793 238020 andy@enterprise-oms.co.uk, the fixes are mostly straightforward and inexpensive to implement (without disruption, if you act quickly enough).

Domain Name Nightmares

Posted on By Andy Poulton
LBC logo

I’ve just started listening to the phone-in shows on London Broadcasting Company [LBC] on DAB, many of which make for interesting listening.

Of course, this means that I have to listen to the adverts, by far the majority of which are targeted specifically at LBC’s London audience. Although I tend to tune-out, two in particular caught my attention , although not for the reasons that the advertisers would like. They reminded me of issues associated with the importance of choosing the right domain name for your business, issues that I thought had been put to bed years ago.

In my experience, most organisations choose their domain name based on their business name “bbc.co.uk” for example, the sector they trade in “diy.com” and/or based on a product they sell or a service they deliver “windows.com”, for example.

The choice of name would be either discussed or shared by email internally, very rarely were domain names discussed and shared in print and this must be why some absolute howlers were registered. The problem being that something that looks good or ‘cool’ in print can be a nightmare to communicate verbally and a domain name that sounds good could send totally the wrong message when viewed in print.

Take “phones4you” as a company name, it “does what it says on the tin” selling mobile phones for you, although the “for” was replaced by “4” to shorten the domain and imitate text speak. Phones4You were lucky to be backed by an expensive TV and print campaign. Imagine, as a small business with a small marketing budget trying to convey the web address in a phone call, “its phones4you.com, that’s phones 4 – the digit 4 not the word – you dot com”.

There were others too, such as Speedofart.com, a London based video production agency, the domain name sounds fine when spoken but has an issue when written down.

Then there’s the Italian power generating company, PowerGen Italia, sounds fine when spoken but looks less good in writing, imagine receiving an email from powergenitalia.com [although this was later proven to be a spoof], unlike pen supplier Pen Island whose domain “penisland.net” is more “Carry On” than they probably would like.

It’ OK having a giggle at some of these but the reality is that many of these websites may not be visible to their target audience, especially where the businesses they are targeting use web-filtering devices to ensure that their personal can only access appropriate websites.

Domain names like this also cause SEO confusion because the search engines have to guess the words from the alphabet-soup of letters and yet the solution is simple, use a hyphen or two, and the intention is immediately visible, speed-of-art.com and pen-island.net for example.

So, back to LBC and the two adverts that set me thinking, one is for a London based Cloud Service provider called Xara Cloud. The voice-over had to enunciate each letter X, A, R, A Cloud to make sure that potential clients did not confuse the X with Z and the second was for Buy2let cars where the voiceover tried to emphasize the 2 but totally failed to communicate whether it was Buy2LetCars, BuyToLetCars or BuyTooLetCars.

The moral of this is simple, when thinking of a domain name, make sure that it looks good in print and is easy to communicate verbally if it’s not, then go back to the drawing board.

I might not be able to undo any domain names that you have registered but I can certainly help with the majority of internet marketing issues that you have, so why not give me a call on 01793 238020 or drop me a line, andy@enterprise-oms.co.uk for an informal and free chat about your issues and how I may be able to help.

What your email address says about you and your business.

Posted on By Andy Poulton
Getting the right email address

I’ve been meaning to write about this for a while now and was reminded again about the message your email address sends when I was following a van recently. The van was sign written [good], carried a large phone number [good], web address in significantly smaller [not so good] http://www.jobbingtrader.co.ukand an email address, not just any email but a Hotmail address [awful], jobbing-trader13@hotmail.com [names have been changed to protect my health].

This is wrong on so many levels.

First off – a Hotmail address, really! In fact any free email address, such as one from Gmail, Yahoo, Virgin, BTInternet or AOL to name but a few really does send the wrong message!

Secondly, it also shouts “I don’t understand”. After all, it’s far easier to remember an email address when the bit that goes after the @ is the same that goes after the www. and you are getting twice the chance of people remembering your contact details

Thirdly, you are missing out on so many opportunities to better manage your email, you can have multiple addresses, info@, sales@, accounts@, enquiries@, myname@ to name just a few. You can then set up folders in your email program for each address and easily create rules which automatically filter incoming emails and move them to the relevant folder.

With each part of your business having a unique email address means that everything is a little easier to prioritise and manage. As an example, you could look at sales@ first because these might be new contracts, accounts@ next because these relate to money and myname@ last because these are more likely to be personal in nature.

All of the above can be easily achieved if you have your own web address because each web address can usually have more than one email address and most email programs enable you to set up folders and create rules.

Managing your emails in this way will help you to present a more professional look to the outside world and enable you to be more effective when it comes to managing your emails and the way that you act, save, delete and back them up. You do back up your emails don’t you?

If you have any questions about your email services, don’t hesitate to get in touch blog@enterprise-oms.co.uk [did you see what I did there?] or give me a call on 01793 238020

What do the new domain name options mean?

Posted on By Andy Poulton

Are new domains worth it for businesses?

More than 1,000 new domain names could soon be available.

New domain names up for grabs
New domain names up for grabs

I was watching TV the other night when up popped an advert for a large and well know web hosting company advertising the forthcoming availability of more than 700 new domain name extensions, known as gTLDs or global Top Level Domains.

Most of us are familiar with the likes of .com, and .co.uk, you’re probably familiar with .info, .net and .eu but ICAAN, the association charged with managing domain names, is currently evaluating over 1,000 new options – how does .accountant, .book or even .zip strike you? They are just 3 under consideration.

When visiting websites it will mean that we will all have to pay more attention to domain extensions to make sure we get to the sites we want, the search engines will face a challenge to deal with this potential explosion in domain extensions whilst domain registration agencies, ruthless marketing companies, consultancies and cybersquatters may feel that their .ship is about to sail in because it’s unlikely that these new gTLDs will be policed.

Very few are, for example .org was always meant to be used by charities and not-for-profit organisations but was quickly hijacked by businesses when the more common .com and .co.uk options had already been registered although .ltd or .gov can only be registered if you are a Limited company or a genuine government department but these controlled domains are in the minority.

Businesses may be sold more domains than they actually need by being told they need to protect their brand and to prevent cybersquatting whilst cybersquatters may jump on the opportunity to make a quick buck by registering the domain names of well-known companies in the hope of holding them to ransom, expecting a large payoff to sell the domains on to them.

Although legislation was passed to outlaw some of the more ruthless scams it’s not actively policed and this explosion in new domains may make Cybersquatting too tempting to resist and could bring the Cybersquatters back in droves as they look to capitalise on these new opportunities and confusion.

To protect your business against cybersquatting you need to make sure your company name is properly registered and trademarked. This will mean that you can use the law to claim what is yours should you fall victim to cybersquatting but it still leaves one question unanswered, which domain names should you register?

Simply put .co.uk and .com are the ones uppermost in people minds so you should always register these and then choose carefully from the new ones and only register those that are really relevant to your business and sector that you trade in.

If you want to talk more help with domain names, websites and online marketing in more detail please email me, andy@enterprise-oms.co.uk or give me a call on 01793 238020