How your domain name can make or break your business
Choosing a name for your startup largely depends upon the availability of the domain name rather than what you have decided. Hoarding domain names is not something which is appreciated by people. The psychology behind a good domain name lies in the fact how easy it is to remember and type the domain name. If you are in a business where your website is the mode of transaction (e-commerce, social networks, content sharing or any other web-based service) then it can largely impact the amount of hits and revenue of your business.
To make sure that people can save a few seconds on the mobile, Facebook bought the domain name fb.com for close to 8.5 million USD from American Farm Bureau Federation. Today when Google tracks its response time in microseconds, and considering the fact that most people use facebook through their smartphones and tablets while on the move, facebook probably saves the time equivalent of many man years every day.
Real estate celebrity Housing.com reportedly bought the .com extension for one million USD. All to save the effort from co.in to .com. Dot com easily registers in people’s mind apart from the fact that nearly all browsers support ctrl+enter for.com. Though saying that this was the sole reason for Housing to move to dot com might be an overstatement.
To save the time of our hard working programmers, GitHub.com bought GHUB.com for 12,600 USD in September 2012. Though the name is not popular but it is a strategic investment. Box.com which is a competitor to DropBox has a huge advantage in terms of its domain name and the ease of use. Box.com reportedly bought this for a close to 9,00,000 USD.
Another interesting story is of the domain name Sex.com which was initially used for advertising and had several lawsuits against it before finally being sold for 13 million USD to an undisclosed buyer.
Well we spoke about the advantages of having the right domain name, but the fun begins when you see the amount of damage a domain name can do if it is not well thought out.Don't believe us? Check out the following domain disasters and judge for yourself.