It's All In The Name: brand

Showing posts with label brand. Show all posts

Saturday, September 22, 2018

New Extensions at Tech Giants

This week Apple used their corporate .apple new domain extension in promotion of their new iPhone models. This got a lot of attention in both the technology and domain communities. I think the real excitement should focus on the fact that they used a domain name phrase, and not simply on the use of a branded new extension. I will expand on that idea in a future post.

It is sometimes overlooked that the biggest technology companies, not surprisingly, have been using new domain extensions in a variety of ways for some time. In this post I look at new domain extension use by Apple, Amazon, Google, Facebook and Netflix. I think there are some lessons for both marketing professionals and domain investors in these examples.

Apple

Apple of course has its own branded .apple new extension. While Experience.Apple is only the second meaningful use of the branded extension yet, clearly it has great potential for all manner of catchy domain name phrases. There are endless two or three word phrases such as create.with.apple to simply.apple that are possible.

But Apple has also for some time used many other new domain extensions. A number of these were for simple redirection, for example Apple.site, Apple.website and Apple.xyz all redirect to the main site. A few other new extensions are used by Apple in a more targeted way such as Apple.news (that not surprisingly goes to their corporate news site) and Apple.technology that takes you to their developer resources.

Amazon

Amazon use a huge number of different new extensions, and I just touch on a few of them in this section. It is actually a lot of fun trying different ngTLDs with the word Amazon! A number of new extensions including .fit, .forsale, .guide, .life, .online, .rocks, .site, .space, .world, .xyz and many more just direct you to the main Amazon website. Amazon also use redirects to their main website for extensions such as .date, .fund, .loan, .loans and .science where the fit is arguably more contrived. They are missing some obvious ones, since .fun, .life and .icu don't resolve so supposedly are not at time of writing controlled by Amazon.

However, Amazon also makes more specific, and interesting, use of some of the other new extensions. Amazon.dog takes you to a page with everything from dog treats to dog beds to books about dogs. Amazon.Christmas, as you guessed, highlights Christmas crafts and decorations. They naturally use the .boats extension for all your boating needs. Amazon do make use of the .lgbt extension, but not in an apparent way to highlight resources for the LGBT community. Amazon.today takes you to today's deals. You might wonder what Amazon.horse takes you to - try it! Wonder where they would take you at the .wtf extension? Try it to find out!

Unlike Apple, Google and Netflix, Amazon does not yet have their own branded .amazon ngTLD, although they have been battling for years to secure it. They are currently trying to placate objections from those associated with the Amazon region of the world. You can read about some of the twists and turns in that here.

Google

It is well known that Alphabet, the parent company of Google, use the new extension domain name abc.xyz for their corporate website.

Google also own the rights to a number of different extensions, and of course had the very successful .app extension release earlier this year. The other active extensions in general availability that they operate are much less well known, extensions such as .soy. They have also for some time operated an internationalized character domain extension that in the Japanese language means 'everyone'. Several of the extensions they have that will soon come into general availability such as .dev and .page are likely to have a significant impact on the domain world. You can keep track of the extensions they operate at https://www.registry.google/.

Unlike Amazon, or even Apple, Google seem not to have put in use many ngTLDs for redirection purposes.

Google do have their own brand as an extension .google. As noted earlier, they use that for information on the extensions they offer. They also make use of it for a corporate blog, as a launch site for finding and registering domain names, and for their artificial intelligence site.

Facebook

I like what Facebook does using the .design ngTLD. At Facebook.design you find a set of articles and videos by members of the Facebook design team. They have also have a set of resources for technology designers who are writing code to interact with Facebook. They even have a link for those who want to apply for a position in design at Facebook. Amazon also uses a .design extension, in a similar mode, but it is a pretty sparse site compared to the Facebook one.

Netflix

As far as I could tell, Netflix make limited use of new domain extensions. However they do use the .film extension, although it simply redirects to their main Netflix site for your country. They could have very effectively used different extensions to point to collated resources in different topics, as Amazon does. Of course Netflix have their own branded ngTLD, although so far the use is limited.

Discussion

I don't see any of these companies ever abandoning their .com (and multiple country redirects) and going to only a new domain extension. I do expect they, and other companies, will increasingly use the new domain extensions in catchy domain name phrase marketing. I hope that more will adopt creative use of multiple extensions along the Amazon line, or do something effective in highlighting a branch of their operation as Facebook do with the .design extension.

Sometimes casual domain observers look only at the main site, and assume that the business is not using new domain extensions. As this has demonstrated, most large companies own and use hundreds or thousands of domains. The use of new extensions in certain niches of their operation is very common among the biggest technology companies. Com may well be king, but the royal court has a lot of minor players making things varied and interesting!

Please add to comments interesting new extension use by the technology giants that I left out!

Original post Sept 22, 2018.
Slight revision Oct 3, 2018 to give information re Netflix brand ngTLD, and the dispute with respect to .amazon.

Disclosure: I currently hold a number of ngTLD domain names. I am not associated (except as a customer) with any of the technology companies named in this report. The icons of those companies are registered trademarks by them.

Fine Print

This post is offered for informational and educational purposes only, and should not be considered domain name investment advice. While an attempt has been made to be accurate, there is no implied or explicit warranty, and you are responsible for verifying any information of importance to you. You also accept full responsibility for any domain investing decisions you may make.

I try to be fair, balanced and objective in my analysis. If you feel this post does not meet that standard, please express your concerns to me.

In a very few cases there may be affiliate links on this blog. This means I receive a small amount if users visit or make purchases via the link. You do not pay any additional charge due to using an affiliate link, and in some cases your cost will be below the normal price. I receive no identifying information about who clicks, or does not click, any link. I never accept compensation to provide favourable review of any particular service or product.

The text of this posting is ©R Hawkes 2018, all rights reserved. However, you may, without permission, use reasonable length portions of the post as long as a link to this post is also provided. If you wish to use the complete contents of a post, please request permission. I am normally open to reprinting, but will consider each request individually.

Thursday, August 9, 2018

A Domain Name that is Pure Gold

The NameBio daily domain sales report for Aug. 6, 2018 indicated that the domain name pure.gold sold on Flippa for $980. To my knowledge there has been no official sales announcement, so I decided to try to see who was the buyer, as well as do a short comparative analysis. Along the way I looked at some existing companies that use the term pure gold in their business name or product line.

Some Possibilities

The name "pure gold" is widely used by a number of different products and companies. At least for me here in Canada, Google search on the term is dominated by sites that relate to the Pure Gold Mining, a major gold mining company headquartered at Vancouver, BC, Canada. Their signature project is the Madsen Mine that you can read about here.

While the name pure gold is an obvious for gold mining companies, it also finds its way into a wealth of other products. For example a US based cosmetics reseller has a whole line of products that use the term pure gold. You can read about Pure Gold Cosmetics here.

One of the main uses of gold is in jewelry, so it is not surprising that the name finds use in that field as well. For example, a Singapore based buyer and seller of gold and silver jewellery operates at the website https://www.puregold.com.sg/.

A jewelry reseller with 150 locations mainly in the Middle East and Singapore operate under the name Pure Gold with a website at the domain name https://www.pugold.com/. Yes, you read that right, no r in the word. They sometimes show this on icons with the r in a dark gold colour, but it does, to me at least, seem contrived, and if I was giving them advice it would be to upgrade their domain name.

Pure gold is also used in ways you would never guess. For example, a travelling exhibition by the Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen shows how rubbish can be repurposed into valuable products. They use the title "Pure Gold". It operates at this website - check them out!

Why is Pure Gold so Popular?

The purity of gold is measured in karats (carat spelling in some jurisdictions). The karat (carat) unit means 1/24 part gold by weight, so something that is pure gold would be 24 karat (carat). Due to rounding, actually anything between 99.95 and 100% would be considered 24 karat and pure gold (even though not 100% purity).

The term pure gold, that literally means gold above 99.95% pure, is more broadly used to represent that a product is genuine. As such, it could be creatively used in many contexts. The term "pure gold" (without quotes) brings up more than 770 million results on Google search. As the expression is so popular in everyday speech, and with a positive connotation as well as easily spelled and spoken, it is an ideal branding term.

I did a Google Books Ngram Viewer search to see how popular the term "pure gold" was used in books over the years. The term was more common in 1900 than currently, although after reaching a minimum in 1986 the term has seen an increase in use in the most recent decade.

Was the Sales Price Reasonable?

It is almost always difficult to estimate the value of a domain name. This is one of the reasons that the automated expressions of worth (such as GoValue and Estibot) frequently give very different results. Those results also frequently do not agree even approximately with actual sales prices. Always remember that any domain name has a value equal to its worth to a potential purchaser. As pointed out above, multiple potential purchasers could significantly benefit from owning this digital asset. While past sales data may help to determine whether a domain name price is reasonable, it is only one component to consider.

Somewhat surprisingly the term "puregold" has only sold once, at least as listed in the NameBio database. In 2016 CBDPureGold.com sold on Flippa for $100. If we look at exact match words 'pure', it has sold 5 times (only 4 different domain names since one sold twice) for an average price of just over $3000. Interestingly, pure in the .io extension sold in January of 2018 on Flippa for $918, but then sold at the end of May, 2018 for $8500 on ParkIO, a very nice turn around for the domain name investor!

If we look at sales in the .gold new domain extension, there have been 11 sales with an average price of $1464. Stay.gold sold for $7000 and liquid.gold for $1500. It seems to me that pure.gold is at least as good as these names, and therefore a somewhat higher price would have been justified.While I think the domain name probably sold for less than its intrinsic value, in the context of still somewhat slow sales of new domain extensions, it is probably a reasonable price. I was surprised that the GoDaddy GoValue estimate of worth of pure.gold was only $288 (these values vary so it may show differently when you check). In my opinion this is significantly less than the domain name is really worth.

The Likely Buyer

So who purchased the domain name pure.gold? With privacy protected Whois it is now much harder to identify a new owner unless there is a public statement or the domain name is rapidly put into use. The Whois record for pure.gold indicates that the owner is from Singapore, and I immediately thought that the likely purchaser was PureGold of Singapore, and that they had upgraded from a third level com in a country code to a generic global second level domain name. I see this would be smart business move for promoting themselves to international sellers. However, when I checked today the domain name redirects to an Undeveloped.com for sale page, implying that the domain name has been purchased by a domain name investor. This domain investor seems to be based in Singapore. So it is possible that the domain name is still available and could be acquired by an end user.

Reflections on the Sale

I think this an example of using a new domain extension to obtain a more direct, memorable and descriptive domain name. A direct match of a company or product line and the domain name is the ideal situation. As I have indicated, the domain name would work perfectly for several different end users. It is important that the branding and marketing services employed by organizations are well informed with all domain extension options, and that they are vigilant and let their clients know when a direct match domain name is available. In the same way that businesses and organizations must be vigilant about reputation and new business trends and opportunities, they should also stay informed about new branding and domain possibilities. This task is made more challenging by the plethora of new extensions, but it is important. If you feel I can help you with this, in one of the niche areas I have expertise in, please do get in touch.

If it is true that this domain name is still for sale, I hope that it will soon be utilized by an end user as it is a superb domain name. Indeed the name is pure gold!

Original post Aug 9, 2018.

Disclosure: I am not associated with the buyer or seller or any of the companies listed here. I do not hold any domain names in the .gold extension.

Fine Print

This post is offered for informational and educational purposes only, and should not be considered domain name investment advice. While an attempt has been made to be accurate, there is no implied or explicit warranty, and you are responsible for verifying any information of importance to you.

In a few cases there may be affiliate links will on this blog. This means I receive a small amount if users visit or make purchases via the link. You do not pay any additional charge due to using an affiliate link, and in some cases below the normal price. I receive no identifying information about who clicks, or does not click, any link. I never accept compensation to provide favourable review of any particular service or product.

I try to be fair, balanced and objective in my analysis. If you feel this post does not meet that standard, please express your concerns to me. As disclosure, I do have a domain portfolio that is predominantly ngTLD domain names, although I do also own a number of .com, .ca, .co and a few other country code extension domains..

The text of this posting is ©R.L. Hawkes, all rights reserved. However, you may, without permission, use reasonable length portions of the post as long as a link to this post is also provided. If you wish to use the complete contents of a post, please request permission. I am normally open to reprinting, but will consider each request individually.

The images used are either those associated with a product or service, or Pixabay images believed to be available for use without attribution. If you see any image that you believe is problematic, please let us know and we will immediately correct the situation.

Wednesday, July 12, 2017

What is a domain name 'win'?

Earlier this year we launched our website NamesThat.Win. We wanted to take the opportunity to discuss what the word 'win' means to us in the context of a domain name and website.

We suggest the following checklist when evaluating your website and its domain name.

The website should reflect positively on your organization. While content is clearly critical, as well as attention to detail, the impression starts with the name you adopt. Yes, the name can be catchy and even cute, but always in a tasteful way.
Honesty is critical. The name and website should reflect what you are about in a clear way. Never use a name to try to pretend your organization and goals are something that they are not. Many will disagree, but I say don't use an .org top level domain (TLD) if you are not an organization, and don't use .com if you are not a business. I wish there were controls so that someone could not use .science if they have nothing to do with science!
The website should be informative. After I visit your website I should feel that my time was well spent in terms of efficient access to valid information. Even if your primary goal is to sell a product or service, your website should provide information to help a potential purchaser make an informed decision, as well as support documentation.
Is the website sustainable? Is it designed so that you can reasonably do what is required to keep it current? Is the total cost sustainable in terms of the value that the website brings to your organization? If you go for a premium domain or an expensive .com, can that cost be justified? Too many people rush into owning too much home for their means, and I find some companies do the same with respect to a domain name and website. Of course many do the opposite, and a year or two later purchase a higher quality domain name and need to rebrand to the new name.
The name should be location appropriate. If you plan to only operate in a single country, with essentially no customers beyond the borders, it does make sense to use a country specific domain name. Research shows that these are more respected and trusted. However, if your vision extends beyond your home country, seriously consider starting with a global top level domain (gTLD), or possibly multiple domain extensions with a common first name. It will be interesting to see how the .gdn (which stands for global domain name) takes off as a general extension for those from all regions.
Almost all websites should feel current. While achieving this will depend partly on the design, having current content is critical. Also, start with a domain name that suggests a modern site. Some domain names just feel ordinary and old. I realize adoption has been slow, but I think that the new global top level domain extensions (ngTLD) offer real opportunities. Make social media interact smoothly with your website. For example, it is easy to have your Twitter feed display on your website.
How memorable is you name, and in what other ways will you help people find you? A name that people can easily remember, and that is also descriptive, will go a long way in people remembering how to find you. I think the ideal domain name is common, but not too common to lend an air of distinctiveness. If you do decide to go with a made up brandable name, you will need to figure in the costs of promoting that name.
Think about the goals for your website. Is it primarily to sell, interact with clients, provide support, contribute to public understanding, earn advertising revenue, or make your organization better known. Make sure your website structure, and the domain name, are both congruent with these goals. If you have two or more rather different goals, you might want to think about multiple domain names to keep the separation clear.

The last point is perhaps the most important. Before you consider available domain names and how much you are willing to pay, or how you will design and host your website, start with the goals you have for your online presence. Make a written list, and get the opinion of others, revising as appropriate.

So why did we select our domain name NamesThat.win? We believe in the long term value of the ngTLDs, so wanted to model one ourselves. Also, we see value in using a domain name expression as our name, and wanted to model that. As a small operation, but with potential customers from around the world, we wanted a global TLD. Considering sustainability, the domain name was reasonable to purchase and to renew (we have it registered for 10 years so our domain costs are completely known for a long time). We feel that your consideration of names ideally starts before you have registered a company name or domain name, so we wanted the word 'name' not 'domain' in our website.

We realize that at first glance .win is an unusual choice. The intention of those who set up the .win registry was that it would mainly support activities such as online gaming. However, as explained above, win is used in everyday language in a much more general sense. A win is something that meets or exceeds your stated goals, and it is in that sense that we selected it for our website.

Ultimately our goal is to help you clarify your goals, to set criteria for evaluating success, and to help you 'win' by achieving success in those goals. We hope that you will continue to visit this blog, access our website regularly, and follow us on Twitter @AGreatDomain.

But enough about us. As the first step to your online 'win', elaborate on your online goals. Only with goals clearly in mind will you be able to plan a successful route forward, and evaluate how successful you have been with your online presence.

It's All In The Name