Why do we struggle?

[humble pie]

I guess we should be positive about lights.co.uk A nice sale, and domain put to use in context.

Ironic really that given all the online tools available now many domainers still struggle to turn their *good* domains into a viable businesses (I realize some don't want too) or at least some form of decent income stream (other than parking). I guess its just that domainers are on a different end of business spectrum for one reason or another..

 

[BeachLife]

I guess we should be positive about lights.co.uk A nice sale, and domain put to use in context.

It was a nice sale for the previous owner, but would you say lights.co.uk is the best domain for them? Their German site uses a brand name, Lamps World (or is it Lights World?), which is where I assume they built 40 million Euro turnover business.

 

[humble pie]

It was a nice sale for the previous owner, but would you say lights.co.uk is the best domain for them? Their German site uses a brand name, Lamps World (or is it Lights World?), which is where I assume they built 40 million Euro turnover business.

I was thinking that, and normally xyzcorplights.co.uk etc would be fine, but in UK a clean start really so can afford to take punt. When you say lights.co.uk there's something so punchy about this super descriptive, sharp and clean generic my brain just gets its with no explanation needed.. it makes me emotional, it excites me even, my knees begin to shake at the thought of telling a friend "visit lights.co.uk they've got some good stuff there".

I think genius to buy this domain.

 

[websaway]

I was thinking that, and normally xyzcorplights.co.uk etc would be fine, but in UK a clean start really so can afford to take punt. When you say lights.co.uk there's something so punchy about this super descriptive, sharp and clean generic my brain just gets its with no explanation needed.. it makes me emotional, it excites me even, my knees begin to shake at the thought of telling a friend "visit lights.co.uk they've got some good stuff there".

I think genius to buy this domain.

I could not agree more.

It's an old argument where the truth seems to be a moving target, depending on changes in g**gle rules. The one thing that remains constant though is the effect a pure short descriptive has on the emotions of people like yourself, how you value that benefit is the big question.

an old thread that you might find interesting.

http://www.acorndomains.co.uk/domain-appraisals/67379-legs-co-uk.html

 

[BeachLife]

I was thinking that, and normally xyzcorplights.co.uk etc would be fine, but in UK a clean start really so can afford to take punt. When you say lights.co.uk there's something so punchy about this super descriptive, sharp and clean generic my brain just gets its with no explanation needed.. it makes me emotional, it excites me even, my knees begin to shake at the thought of telling a friend "visit lights.co.uk they've got some good stuff there".

I think genius to buy this domain.

That's a domainer belief, IMHO. Most people don't associate the domain suffix with a brand, just the name. You get great clothes at ASOS, not at asos.co.uk. Cheap SIM at GiggGaff, but tickets at Eventbrite etc. So the brand name for this site, is it Lights? "Get great lights at lights". A branding nightmare.

There is a great gift shop locally to me that has called itself "The Shop". It's a nightmare. You can't tell someone you bought a nice gift at The Shop. You can't look up The Shop online.

 

[humble pie]

That's a domainer belief, IMHO. Most people don't associate the domain suffix with a brand, just the name. You get great clothes at ASOS, not at asos.co.uk. Cheap SIM at GiggGaff, but tickets at Eventbrite etc. So the brand name for this site, is it Lights? "Get great lights at lights". A branding nightmare.

There is a great gift shop locally to me that has called itself "The Shop". It's a nightmare. You can't tell someone you bought a nice gift at The Shop. You can't look up The Shop online.

Your countering with a weak and old argument.

In fact your right, better they had bloggslights.co.uk for reg fee. Your gift shop analogy fails, firstly saying its a *nightmare* is over doing it - if its good and people want it, people will find it, the name is irrelevant as I would qualify it with location to someone as you need to go to 'The Shop in Hackney'. Don't say they'd better rebrand with theshophackney.co.uk instead of the theshop.co.uk (they should have it anyway true). Online the physical location is irrelevant in many respects.

 

[BeachLife]

Your countering with a weak and old argument.

It is an old argument that has become stronger over the years, as Google removed the benefit of exact match.

In fact your right, better they had bloggslights.co.uk for reg fee.

No, that's not my argument. I believe in great domains, just not in keyword match. They would have been better, IMHO, spending the money on a short memorable domain such as Nest, or Warm, Glow, Blaze, Shine etc. A branding consultant would come up with better ones, that's just 2 minutes with a thesaurus.

I would qualify it with location to someone as you need to go to 'The Shop in Hackney'.

You would send someone to "The Shop in Hackney"? I think you will find there are many shops in Hackney. You would have to qualify it further.

 

[martin-s]

I would have preferred lighting.co.uk, but I'm a firm believer in exact match online brands (and have been willing to put my money where my mouth is).

 

[humble pie]

If your still worrying about emd and keyword match this far in then you need to give up domaining or start thinking of the bigger picture

What your essentially saying is lights.co.uk got it wrong big time by A. buying lights.co.uk instead of using companylights.co.uk, B. emd boat is dead so a bad purchase, C. everyone's going to forget and confuse them with other lights related domain/companies because its a keyword. If the above is correct does their business still fail?

This is great domain for them with or without emd. You could argue that yes objectively other domains *might* offer similar benefits e.g. lighting.co.uk or glow.co.uk type of things.

I forgot to say best tell B&Q to bin using diy.com

It is an old argument that has become stronger over the years, as Google removed the benefit of exact match.



No, that's not my argument. I believe in great domains, just not in keyword match. They would have been better, IMHO, spending the money on a short memorable domain such as Nest, or Warm, Glow, Blaze, Shine etc. A branding consultant would come up with better ones, that's just 2 minutes with a thesaurus.



You would send someone to "The Shop in Hackney"? I think you will find there are many shops in Hackney. You would have to qualify it further.

 

[bonusmedia]

I'm an end user/developer, not a domainer and I'm still worrying about EMD and keyword match.

Why do domainers struggle? Maybe because many have limited experience of building/running online businesses beyond domaining, which is very different from ecommerce, affiliate sites, services etc. When you could stick up parking pages or thin sites and make money why bother to learn those skills?

I think it's also fair to say quite a few people are not very willing to adapt to change. That's a common trap when you've had it easy for a while and I've fallen into it a few times.

 

[Retired_Member42]

I think a lot of it depends on where they get their customers. Sure, lights.co.uk would sound great on the radio, look fantastic on a business card and in terms of word of mouth advertising it's ideal. If that's your customer generation model then great.

If you're talking about SEO though, it's a can of worms. Firstly as we all know in terms of you wanting to rank for "Lights" because of your domain name, well, you can forget it. In terms of link building for that term, you're knackered because of the low threshold associated for EMD's - you'd stand a much better and safer chance link building for "lights" on a none-EMD. Then you've got the brand metric factors, which are ever increasing. People talking about lights could be talking about your brand, or lights in general. Same same goes for searching for lights, are they really searching for lights or searching for your brand - both of these scenarios provide strong, rank affecting weighting and with a domain like lights.co.uk, you'd lose it or it would be heavily diluted. You'd be much better off with a brand which is only talked about as your brand, Google, Microsoft, eBay etc.

On top of that, you've got all the other platforms which you ideally need to pair with your brand name. Can you get @lights, can you get fb.com/lights and so on? Probably not. These outlets are obviously becoming more and more important and do you really want to use different naming conventions across social/domain? Probably not.

For me, the holy grail of a brand name is not a generic .co.uk, it is a name which is unique, fitting to my business (in some way) and that I can buy the .co.uk, .com and acquire all social handles day one. This covers all of the above with no leakage in terms of brand metrics or confusion across the networks.

Perhaps that's just my preference but there is no way in hell I'd substitute all of the above just to get a nice sounding .co.uk domain name.

 

[bonusmedia]

Lights.co.uk has far more authority as a brand than BloggsLights.co.uk does.

Whether you're right about SEO or not, (I would go for a category killer EMD every time) it isn't the only channel. If you're building a new ecommerce brand one of the biggest challenges is convincing customers you can be trusted and that you offer quality products and service.

You could easily spend 10 X £25k and still not achieve the level of trust that comes with a high end generic.

 

[humble pie]

seo's dead though (or very nearly) isn't it?

(I guess that's another discussion :neutral: )

 

[Retired_Member42]

Lights.co.uk has far more authority as a brand than BloggsLights.co.uk does.

Whether you're right about SEO or not, (I would go for a category killer EMD every time) it isn't the only channel. If you're building a new ecommerce brand one of the biggest challenges is convincing customers you can be trusted and that you offer quality products and service.

You could easily spend 10 X £25k and still not achieve the level of trust that comes with a high end generic.

Authority in what sense? You're talking like a domain name investor and like it's 4 years ago. People in general outside of the domain world aren't particularly bothered about domains. I think they'd be equally happy to buy from lights.london as they would lights.co.uk - nobody cares and that's only becoming more apparent. Perhaps it's personal preference but there is no way I'd lose the clear metrics that come with having a unique brand than simply having a "good" domain name.

 

[Retired_Member42]

seo's dead though (or very nearly) isn't it?

(I guess that's another discussion :neutral: )

SEO in terms of keyword anchors and exact match domains is very much dead. But Google is still a mathematical algorithm and the very factors I mentioned above are what is influencing it. In some ways having a brand such as lights.co.uk does more harm than good in an SEO sense.

 

[Retired_Member42]

If you're building a new ecommerce brand one of the biggest challenges is convincing customers you can be trusted and that you offer quality products and service.

But does a generic domain REALLY convey trust to the guy looking to buy lights online who knows nothing about domain names etc? It's like you're saying if lights.co.uk had a crappy site on it people would trust it because of the name. They wouldn't. They trust it because of how authentic the site and buying process looked - something you could achieve regardless of your domain name with the exception of something long winded.

 

[martin-s]

Authority in what sense? You're talking like a domain name investor and like it's 4 years ago. People in general outside of the domain world aren't particularly bothered about domains. I think they'd be equally happy to buy from lights.london as they would lights.co.uk - nobody cares and that's only becoming more apparent.

The public don't particularly care when they're about to push the buy button, agreed. But your customer base sure will. A premium generic gives you immediate credibility.

 

[Retired_Member42]

The public don't particularly care when they're about to push the buy button, agreed. But your customer base sure will. A premium generic gives you immediate credibility.

But isn't the public your customer base anyway?

 

[mojoco]

Viewing from another angle.
I can categorically say that having an exact match domain opens doors to suppliers. Hello I'm Fred from The London Light Company may be ignored. Whereas Hello I'm Fred from Lights.co.uk is much more likely to get you through to the correct person, people automatically assume you are a player in the given industry and take your call, or respond to your email.

 

[Retired_Member42]

Viewing from another angle.
I can categorically say that having an exact match domain opens doors to suppliers. Hello I'm Fred from The London Light Company may be ignored. Whereas Hello I'm Fred from Lights.co.uk is much more likely to get you through to the correct person, people automatically assume you are a player in the given industry and take your call, or respond to your email.

I can imagine it does to a supplier in the know with regards to domain names and so on. But I don't believe for one second that your request would be ignored if you say I'm from The London Light Company and I want to place an order for 1,000 units.

I'm not saying there is zero benefit to having a generic domain such as lights.co.uk, of course there is and we could all argue the positives and negatives. It's just that in terms of what I see currently and how I see things progressing in the future, the negatives outweigh the positives significantly which makes me question the investment.

Honestly if I see EMD's in the SERPs now I question whether it's some joker with an FSB/phpBay store rather than a legit/established business. I'd take each site as it comes before deciding who to buy from, I'd rule out the domain completely.