Why do we struggle?

[bonusmedia]

I'd be interested in knowing which of you actually run successful websites.

Incidentally Lights.co.uk is an excellent site

 

[martin-s]

Can you share your experience in more detail?

I'm happy to privately, but I'd rather not do so in public.

I'm guessing that a lot of people on here know the domain I'm talking about and can guess the customers whose doors have opened. Admittedly it wasn't our only credibility factor, but there is no doubt it made us instantly more credible.

Not a single large firm refused my enquiry when approached via email or phone.

 

[Retired_Member42]

I'd be interested in knowing which of you actually run successful websites.

Incidentally Lights.co.uk is an excellent site

I'd be interested to see how the people who use product/service domains for their brands as opposed to a unique brand name compared in both online/offline success.

Nothing to do with our sites or past/current successes. It's there for all to see what works and what doesn't in terms of branding.

Lights.co.uk does look a good site. But it'd be the same good site on a different domain wouldn't it? Maybe it would be event better as they would have had an extra £5k to spend on development

 

[websaway]

Not necessarily. As i said above I openly trade the very domains I'm saying should be avoid as the market is there for them. Admittedly it's dwindling, but it's still present.

I don't think it makes a good brand having to bolt your domain name extension - in general. What if I build lights.co, lights.uk, lights.com etc? Your brand name is lost for each extension that becomes available and used. What if you have a high street shop, is your brand still Lights.co.uk? How do you present yourself on social? twitter.com/lights_co_uk - How do people search your brand on Google to increase your brand metrics? Do they put in lights.co.uk or do they go to lights.co.uk in the first place? And don't even get me started on people having to search "lights" to be able to find your specific company.

You base all your positives as if anyone who ever wants to buys lights knows about domain names be it their value or their extensions and so on.

Even I could come up with positives for using lights.co.uk even though it appears I'm against it. There are some positives. My whole point is, day one, building a business, the negatives outweight the positives. You'd be better choosing something as close to brand perfection as possible for probably significantly less money.

We then get back to the argument of weighing up the cost of branding a new reg against the inherent value contained in a short product specific.

 

[bonusmedia]

Good idea, you start.

Site, traffic numbers, income, profit should do it?

Multiple sites, large numbers, full time staff, numerous contractors.

Speaking of which I'll get back to work now

 

[bonusmedia]

I'd be interested to see how the people who use product/service domains for their brands as opposed to a unique brand name compared in both online/offline success.

Nothing to do with our sites or past/current successes. It's there for all to see what works and what doesn't in terms of branding.

Lights.co.uk does look a good site. But it'd be the same good site on a different domain wouldn't it? Maybe it would be event better as they would have had an extra £5k to spend on development

Ask doug about carrentals.co.uk / .com

£5k is a drop in the ocean to Lampenwelt

 

[humble pie]

I'll share a site with you.

Its a geo domain, not huge numbers but about 200k easy repeat revenue over the last 7 or 8 years. The design is probably about 7/10 on a good day so its solid.. If it was not placename.co.uk then I would kiss good bye to nearly all of that. My clients want to be on it because of the domain credibility and site looks good - they don't even seem to care about traffic.

There are a lot of thick users about who wouldn't get generic.co.uk if bit them on the arse. The way its turned out all my projects are for reasons above and the markets I'm in, are aimed at middle class, articulate people who 'get' forms of quality via domain and website, but the more informed the end user/client is I find you can't have one without the other.. they expect it.

 

[websaway]

I'd be interested to see how the people who use product/service domains for their brands as opposed to a unique brand name compared in both online/offline success.

Nothing to do with our sites or past/current successes. It's there for all to see what works and what doesn't in terms of branding.

Lights.co.uk does look a good site. But it'd be the same good site on a different domain wouldn't it? Maybe it would be event better as they would have had an extra £5k to spend on development

That's precisely it, save money on a name and spend it on seo and development. A repeat expense which needs to be perpetually changed and updated and puts one at the mercy of others.
A short memorable category or product specific easy recall domain name has a perpetual inherent value and only costs a small renewal fee after purchase.
And if you choose wisely it may have a resale value if the business fails.
Try selling the SEO or other purchases relating to websites and marketing which you can easily spend a fortune on.

I am only referring to a limited budget situation.

 

[Retired_Member42]

Ask doug about carrentals.co.uk / .com

£5k is a drop in the ocean to Lampenwelt

I really think you're missing my point. I'm not saying that any service / product domain is useless. I'm talking about branding and how the positives and negatives compare. Sure, we can ask how much CarRentals.co.uk generates, but let's ask Avis, Hertz, Europcar, Sixt, Avis etc what they generate? Let's also see where each of them ranks for anything other than their domain name term and which ones the guy in the street has heard of.

If your only argument for service / product domains is a handful of them that just happen to rank / make money or have been bought out then this discussion is a lost cause. I can probably go through the SERPs for the big phrases, find a handful of sites that do use keyword domains. I could probably name you a couple of well known brands too. But in comparison to none-product/service domains, it's a tiny number.

 

[Retired_Member42]

I'll share a site with you.

Its a geo domain, not huge numbers but about 200k easy repeat revenue over the last 7 or 8 years. The design is probably about 7/10 on a good day so its solid.. If it was not placename.co.uk then I would kiss good bye to nearly all of that. My clients want to be on it because of the domain credibility and site looks good - they don't even seem to care about traffic.

There are a lot of thick users about who wouldn't get generic.co.uk if bit them on the arse. The way its turned out all my projects are for reasons above and the markets I'm in, are aimed at middle class, articulate people who 'get' forms of quality via domain and website, but the more informed the end user/client is I find you can't have one without the other.. they expect it.

How on earth is a geo domain relevant to anything we're talking about?

 

[Retired_Member42]

That's precisely it, save money on a name and spend it on seo and development. A repeat expense which needs to be perpetually changed and updated and puts one at the mercy of others.
A short memorable category or product specific easy recall domain name has a perpetual inherent value and only costs a small renewal fee after purchase.
And if you choose wisely it may have a resale value if the business fails.
Try selling the SEO or other purchases relating to websites and marketing which you can easily spend a fortune on.

I am only referring to a limited budget situation.

Well this is what we were saying earlier, development wise you're going to have to spend the same money as you're not going to get sales solely because of your domain name. You need a high end platform on both domain options. SEO wise, you know that you're not going to rank for your keyword/product used in your domain without a lot of effort. A lot of effort that will be restricted BECAUSE it's keyword name. You could build a lot more links for "keyword" to something.co.uk than you ever could to keyword.co.uk without tripping the filters. Then you've got the brand metrics which are all but lost because Google cannot identify brand mentions / searches for your company against other uses of the generic term. As I keep saying, the negatives outweigh the positives. You're still talking as if an EMD sends you to the top of the rankings. It doesn't.

 

[humble pie]

I suppose it wouldn't matter actually, I'm just demonstrating domain credibility for getting people through the door.

Its seems you don't have much success with some better domains you have tried to develop, your saying it made no difference to your success or failure?

How on earth is a geo domain relevant to anything we're talking about?

 

[Retired_Member42]

I suppose it wouldn't matter actually, I'm just demonstrating domain credibility for getting people through the door.

Its seems you don't have much success with some better domains you have tried to develop, your saying it made no difference to your success or failure?

I'm saying it's about choosing the right domain for the right situation.

London.co.uk - great domain for a geo site, cityoflondon.co.uk, perhaps not
CarRentals.co.uk - great domain for a comparison site, awful for a car rental company

... and so on.

The initial point I made as if I was starting a business, selling a product or service, day one there is a hell of a lot of factors I'd look for than being solely concerned with having a domain that match my product or service exactly and when comparing all those factors, a domain such as lights.co.uk would not be anywhere near my first choice.

 

[websaway]

PianoLessons dot com

A good example of a service specific killer that really worked.

Priceless.

 

[Brassneck]

PianoLessons dot com

A good example of a service specific killer that really worked.

Priceless.

Can you explain?

When I type in piano lessons plus a place which I think most people looking for a music teacher would do I get lots of relevant sites with hardly a keyword to be seen in any domain?

 

[websaway]

Can you explain?

When I type in piano lessons plus a place which I think most people looking for a music teacher would do I get lots of relevant sites with hardly a keyword to be seen in any domain?

If I type pianolessons dot com I get the site.
If I type piano lessons into the major search engine it's on the front page.

this works perfectly for the site intentions.

 

[Retired_Member42]

Talk about clutching at straws There are always going to be examples of domains that work but it's about the majority and for the vast VAST majority these sort of domains will not work at all. I've got .org.uk that still rank but we're not all rushing to tell people to build on them are we.

 

[websaway]

Talk about clutching at straws There are always going to be examples of domains that work but it's about the majority and for the vast VAST majority these sort of domains will not work at all. I've got .org.uk that still rank but we're not all rushing to tell people to build on them are we.

It was simply an example, it was not really meant to prove a point.
Your argument centres around SEO , it obviously has merit, I don't think anyone is saying it doesn't.

The fact I'm pressing is the value of certain domains with or without ranking, if they rank well then that's the icing on the cake.

I have to say there has been an impressive degree of decorum within this thread, makes it a pleasure to follow and participate.

 

[Retired_Member42]

I agree a lot of the points I make refer to SEO in some form or another but the two, particularly in recent years are becoming extremely intertwined. What is good in terms of brand recognition in the "real world" is exactly what Google are using as the basis of their algorithm post Penguin. Ranking brands based on who is talking about them and who is searching for them along with how good a match the result is to the subject at hand based on shares/time on page and so on. All of these metrics would apply to the offline world too, a good brand would be one that people look for and talk about and so on.

In order to acheieve a good brand, aside from the obvious of providing a good service is you need to have a clear, uniform brand across all the platforms that people use to find you. Your brand when access via the high street, google, twitter, facebook or even word of mouth has to be consistent. It needs to be a brand which when people talk about it, it's instantly recognisable and accredited to you. The lights.co.uk example leaves so much room for confusion/error and general loss of important metrics on these front which by far outweigh the positive of owning what we all know as "a good domain". That's all I'm saying.

If you're building a business or even solely an online business, you just have to look past the domain. It's becoming less and less important and the factors that made it important are slowly dwindling away.

 

[websaway]

It could equally be argued that the more difficult and expensive it becomes to rank a site the more valuable a domain with easy recall and recognisable content becomes.