Part one of three guest authored pieces on the evolving landscape of the domain name space by Easyspace and Famous Four Media
The Last 20 years.
During the last twenty years the .com Top Level Domain name (the part of the domain after the dot) has witnessed exponential growth. At the time of publication there were approximately 120million .com domain names registered. Even the most optimistic entrepreneur would find it difficult to predict that their business could sell 120million units in such a short period of time!
A domain name is an aesthetic product. Every website on the Internet is hosted at a physical location somewhere in the world, and that physical location is indexed by a series of numbers known as an IP address for example www.nic.trade is hosted at: 95.138.166.180. The IP address is of course infinitely more difficult to remember than nic.trade, thus a domain name effectively “masks” the IP address and allows Internet users a more efficient way to get to their desired destination. This development was a masterstroke!
So domain names as we understand them today were conceived to make navigation of the Internet much more efficient by consisting of short and easy to remember terms. Having established that there are c.120million .com domain names registered to date, it therefore stands to reason than most (if not all) of those which satisfy this criteria have been registered.
New GTLDs
This apparent lack of good names puts start-up companies and small medium enterprise at a distinct disadvantage – Cue new gTLDs (new domain name endings).
Since the beginning of 2014, there have been around 150 new domain name endings launched with more set to follow later this year. The benefits for small medium enterprise are twofold:
1) They level the playing field in terms of online and offline promotion of your website; and
2) The new endings are much more intuitive and therefore give your customers a better sense of what you do as a business.
For example: if you sell car spares to trade, then what could be better than CarSpares.Trade as the place to host your website; or if you are John Simpson & Sons Commercial Heating Suppliers, then what about www.JSS.trade .
These are short, memorable, intuitive and brandable. Also and more importantly they’re available, and at a price the average small medium enterprise can afford. In fact you can register nearly any .trade domain name with Easyspace now for £16.99. What’s more is the term trade is synonymous with trust and authority hence your customers will assume prominence and prestige in your industry.
.TRADE – Special Offer
Now is a good time to secure your .TRADE domain name since Easyspace has a .TRADE price promotion – normally it sells for £19.99, but for a limited time only you can secure a .TRADE with Easyspace for only £16.99 – price reduction will automatically be applied in your basket.
It is understood that the top 100,000 websites in the World by traffic have less than 9 characters to the left of the dot in their domain name. Now is the time to secure your shortened (possibly .trade) domain name.
In our next piece we’ll look at how new domain endings have already changed the navigational habits of Internet users, and in the final part we will take a look into the future.
