E-commerce has had a rather curious beginning in 1972. Back then, when e-commerce was not heard of, some students of Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used ARPANET to fix up sale of cannabis between them, unaware that what they had incepted in their dorm rooms would be the genesis of billions in profit for future retailers.
To give you a perspective, in 2017, retail e-commerce sales worldwide amounted to 2.3 trillion US dollars and e-retail revenues are projected to grow to 4.88 trillion US dollars in 2021. (Source: Statista)
If you are an existing or to-be e-commerce business owner, you are probably thinking how you could thrive in this multi-trillion dollar industry. The key challenge today for e-commerce business owners such as you is to consistently keep evolving in order to keep up with the customer’s longer-than-ever shopping lists and shorter-than-ever attention spans by building a stronger-than-ever brand to create lasting relationships with their customers. One of the main ingredients of building an e-commerce brand is its website, of course. And every website begins with a domain name.
Domains names and e-commerce branding
E-commerce business domain name is your first and the most important point of engagement with your customers. Thus, your domain name is an opportunity to create a great first impression.
To evaluate the effectiveness of a domain name, consider these questions:
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What does the domain name tell the customer about the business and the brand it represents?
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Is it memorable?
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Is it easy to understand or does it leave room for confusion?
A lot of businesses lose out on customers because their domain names are unimpressive and easily forgettable. So, for the next purchase, the customers just go to the search engine to find a seller instead of typing in the domain name of a business they might have come across earlier.
Domain names and new domain extensions
To make domain names more brandable and memorable, hundreds of new domain extensions have been made available to fulfill specific purposes.
While .COM was meant for websites of ‘commercial’ nature and .ORG for all social ‘organizations’, today there is .TECH for technology, .FUN for fun and entertainment, .PRESS for news and journalism and .STORE for retail and e-commerce stores.
This availability of new domain extensions has opened up a monumental opportunity for new-age retailers to choose a domain name that contributes towards building a strong online brand.
Benefits of new domain extensions
The first ever domain name registered was Symbolics.com on March 15 1985 – this means that .COM has been around for over 30 years!
New domain extensions, which were launched in 2012 or later, are today what .COM was 3 decades ago. Therefore, a huge number of short, relevant and meaningful domain names are available to be registered in new domain extensions. You need not compromise with your desirable domain name anymore by adding an extra word or numeric, replacing ‘s’ with ‘z’ or integrating an awkwardly placed hyphen in the name.
An additional benefit is that domain names on new domain extensions give you the ability to choose names that will pass the Radio Test. As we move into the era of voice search, domain names should be easily understood and searchable by artificial assistants such as Alexa and Siri.
If you tell them to go to www.bazookkastorez.com, they may not be able to help you. New domain extensions, such as .STORE and .TECH, solve this problem by giving you an opportunity to choose short and relevant domain names such as www.howto.store or www.beyou.store.
.STORE for retail and e-commerce
The word “store” is an intuitive suffix to every retail brand. Don’t you just search for ‘Apple store’ or ‘shoe stores near me’? This makes .STORE an effective domain extension for branding retail or e-commerce business.
It helps you keep your domain name light and lively (www.bestcookiezstore.com vs www.bestcookie.store) for your existing and potential customers when they’re searching the web or typing in the address bar.
As customers increasingly take to the internet to fulfill their shopping needs, websites with immediately recognizable domain names are likely to move to the front of the line. With millions of shoppers browsing the web, do you want to miss out the opportunity to stand out? A .STORE domain establishes what your business is about and what the customers can expect once they land on your website. For example, just the domain name www.urbandictionary.store is enough for anyone to guess what the website is all about.
Influence the consumer psychology with your domain name
“My name is Samantha. I am a pastry chef and I live in Paris where I own a bakery.”
Chances are that you have already forgotten what this person’s name was but the other details about her have registered more clearly. Are you wondering why? It’s because the name by itself is meaningless while the rest of the narrative painted a picture in your mind.
A .STORE domain helps you do that. It allows you to make your domain name not just a ‘name’ but also a brand narrative that customers can remember. For example, unclaimed.store or thatmerch.store. By telling a story through your, you can influence the customers’ psychology and become hard- to-forget.
Some of the most notable brands of today have used new domain extensions to be the online address of their retail storefront. Some examples include Fortune 500 companies such as Meredith Corporation (www.magazine.store) and Emirates (www.emirates.store) as well as world-renowned artists such as Lorde (www.lorde.store) and Khalid (www.khalid.store).
These brands and celebrities are just some of many that have found new domain extensions to be of value when it comes to branding their online retail presence. If you, too, are looking to create an extraordinary brand of your new-age retail store, head to vtexpartner.store and search for your .STORE domain name.
