Do you rush your domain name purchase?

Whether you are involved in online or offline business, when you prepare to work on a new projects one of the things you most likely have on your agenda is registering a domain name. Interestingly, many people do not pay enough attention to this important facet of a business’ identity.

According to a study by 1and1 internet, a lot of business owners do not pay enough attention to selecting the right domain name for their online presence.

A survey of 1074 American businesses revealed that the average business spends less than 12 hours choosing their main domain name. Some 60 percent of business owners sought no second opinion before making a selection and over half (57 percent) did not consider options such as .biz or .net at all.

This is really interesting considering what a domain name can do for a business. Choosing the right, memorable domain name can literally mean the difference between a hugely successful venture, and a mediocre one.

U.S. businesses most often choose their primary domain name in haste. Some 42 percent of businesses surveyed spent the same time selecting their domain as they did sourcing minor equipment such as their coffee maker or paper shredder (less than 1 hour). The average U.S. business admitted to spending less than 12 hours on the decision, the same amount of time spent selecting IT equipment such as PCs and printers. Some 60 percent of business owners did not seek a second opinion, even though over half (58 percent) had to modify their domain because their first choice was not available.

I am of the opinion that educating business owners about the potential of gTld domains, and domains with suffixes other than .com, and of course the value of generic, quality keyword domains could potentially mean a huge increase in domain sales across the domaining board, not to mention that it would benefit the business owners.

So, perhaps 1and1 or other domain name registrars could start a campaign of explicitly promoting domaining via workshops to local businesses across the US and the world. In the long run, it would benefit the registrar as well as the domaining world at large.

For the entire press release by 1and1, go here.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 14th, 2008 at 2:30 pm and is filed under Domain News. 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.