Does your internet domain fit your business?

Choosing the right domain to best suit your business name is always a challenge.

The best approach is to choose a single word, followed by .CO.UK or .COM for an international business. This year there brings a selection of new domains. It will soon be possible to have your profession, hobby or maybe a UK country, e.g., .CYMRU for your domain extension. The ideal option is to have just one acronym or word after the first dot. Not so easy when the sub-domain .CO.UK has been widely used.

Now for the good news. Nominet, the UK registrars are giving owners of .CO.UK domains first option on obtaining the equivalent .UK domain. Having already obtained my business name, followed by .CO.UK, I have been able to reserve my .UK domain in readiness for its release on 10th June 2014.

As I want to protect brand and company identification on the internet, my decision was to obtain all “top level domains” (TLD) and ensure each points to my existing website at .CO.UK. The list of new domains seems endless, although all I really need for a company trading mainly in UK and Europe is .CO.UK, .COM, .EU and .UK. How about your business? Can someone muscle in on your brand by buying a local domain? You will be able to request a .UK domain in June, but will only get it if there is no .CO.UK equivalent or if the current .CO.UK owner refuses .UK.

It’s just good business sense…

Give me a call, or complete the form below, I’ll ask a couple of questions and offer some thoughts, we can then decide the next steps.

With kind regards – Gareth

Gareth Crompton, MBCI
Abide Consulting Limited
PPPIG: PEOPLE, PROCESS, PREMISES, INFORMATION, GOVERNANCE
Mobile. +44 (0)7507 560214
Office. +44 (0)1256 761556
Website: www.abideconsulting.co.uk

3 thoughts on “Does your internet domain fit your business?”

I own a number of domain names and their various extensions, haven’t been offered a .uk reservation though. Thanks for letting us know and I’ll look out for it.

One extension you didn’t mention is .biz. I snoozed on the .com extension for one of my sites and when I moved to the US and thought I may want an international extension I bought .biz. So far that just points to the same holding page as the rest of the domains with that name, there is a build underway though and hopefully I’ll be able to unveil it to all Business in Berkshire readers by the end of March!

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Hi “Skytash” or maybe Tash. Indeed .UK has be available to reserve and purchase for use after 10th June for a couple of weeks now. It is only currently available to owners of a similar .co.uk domain. Without a .co.uk you can express interest but cannot guarantee its reservation for yourself. Hope that this helps. Rgds Gareth.

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