Domain benefits

The importance of domain names

Domain names are the shopfronts of the internet.  They work for you, together with your website, to represent your business and your brand online twenty four hours a day, seven days a week.

Because of the credit crunch competition for all businesses is increasing and, as a result, owning the right domain name has never been so important.

Using real world examples, here are several reasons why domain names are important for your business, your brand and your future growth:

Specific and obvious domain names are more memorable for customers and website visitors.  They are more likely to return to your site if they can remember its name.

Having a keyword rich domain name, together with a well designed website, is known to greatly enhance natural search engine positions.  This in turn can lead to savings in pay per click advertising.  Speak Languages! enjoy a number one position in Google for “speak English” following their acquisition of speakenglish.co.uk from Shores in 2005.

Owning the generic domain name relevant to your industry sets you apart from the competition and can be the vital factor that wins you the business rather than your competition.  If you wanted an industrial oven, where else would you go other than industrialovens.co.uk – it gives instant credibility to the brand.  We supplied this domain name to the current owner in 2007.

Some potential customers will just type in the domain name corresponding to what they are looking for, meaning that you will get relevant targeted traffic without having to advertise the domain name or brand.  The owners of breakdowncover.co.uk (sold by Shores in 2004) receive many daily visitors looking to buy breakdown cover every single day purely because they own this generic domain.

The reverse is also true – if you don’t own the generic domain for your industry or your business name can mean that you are losing out on website traffic and business.  Domain names are a finite resource, if you don’t own them your competitors will.

If your business name is based on a surname or location, it’s likely that there are many other businesses using the same name.  You could lose out on business because your customers end up at a website for a business with a similar name supplying completely different products/services.  Lyndhurst Building Services recognised this when they acquired Lyndhurst.co.uk in 2005 having previously operated from lyndhurstbuilding.co.uk. 

Short, punchy, memorable domain names reduce the risk of misspelling when both visiting websites and sending emails/enquiries.

The better your domain name, the lower the chance of losing business to misspellings or so-called ‘typosquatters’.