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Why use the .com domain?
A nonprofit executive recently asked me why her organization registered the ".com" domain that matches their ".org" domain. Not only that, she said, but they actually use the www.nonprofitname.com in some of their marketing! I explained that there are three reasons for this. 1) Many web users, especially those who engage frequently in e-commerce, think everything on the web ends in ".com" and would more likely type "redcross.com" into their browser than "redcross.org" for example. You'd certainly want them to find you either way. 2) You don't want someone else to register the ".com" domain and either use it for other purposes, or try to extort thousands of dollars from you to get it back. Imagine how embarrassed you'd be if your ".com" turned out like www.whitehouse.com (try it if you don't blush easily). 3) It's a great opportunity to measure your offline advertising effectiveness. If you normally use the .org domain, and you want to measure the web traffic you can generate from featuring your site on a brochure, then you can print the ".com" address on the brochure. That's much easier than printing your ".org" address with a unique link like "/code1" after it. Visitors can be counted as they get to the ".com" address, then redirected to the ".org" to see your site. It's easy to set up any domains you want. Each one costs under $25 per year to register. There are now a dozen or more "top level domains" like .org, .net, .com, .info, .biz, .us, etc. We recommend reserving only the .com and .org addresses, but feel free to use others if your domain name is likely to be used by someone else, or if you want to use it for testing. It's easy to measure the visits each one uses, and drop little used domains when they expire. While we're on the subject of domains, ask yourself, "Does my domain say who I am, or what I do?" Unless you're the Red Cross, using your name, or worse yet, initials, as your domain name may be useful only to your board and staff. Using an action-oriented domain like "EndHunger.org" or "SaveThePygmies.com" is much more likely to bring in new traffic, and to score higher on search engine rankings when people search on those subjects. August 2003 | ||
