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Your domain name is a marketing tool: here’s how to use it to your advantage

There are numerous elements that go towards building a successful business. And one of the most important elements is, quite simply, your domain name. It’s a name that people will come to associate with your business as it’s one of the first things about your business they come into contact with. It’s what helps them find your website on search engines. It tells them what you do – and how you can help them. So how can you make the most of your domain name when it – quite rightly so – feels like all the good ones are taken?

In this blog post, I’m going to show you how to leverage your website’s domain name to build a better brand – and get more business. Your domain name is a powerful marketing tool: here’s how to use it to your advantage:

The importance of a great domain name

the importance of a great domain name

As I mentioned earlier, your domain name is one of the first points of contact between potential customers and your business. At this stage, a great first impression is essential; in other words, a great domain name can help you get more business and visitors, while a bad one…well, it can mean a lot of lost opportunities for your business.

A good domain name, together with a professional-looking website will, first of all, lend your business authenticity, which is extremely important if the visitor isn’t already familiar and trusting your business. Not only that, but it will also help with your branding since your domain name is such an important part of your online persona.

For instance, globally popular strength trainer, Bret Contreras, also known as The Glute Guy, has branded his official merchandise store as www.bretcontreras.store. Just by looking at the domain one can absorb that this is the Bret Contreras “store”. This type of branding helps in two ways:

  • It builds a strong brand positioning for the businesses
  • It enables businesses to acquire shorter, keyword rich domain names; which goes a long way in brand building

It’s also worth mentioning that a good domain name will even help with your search engine optimization – namely, helping your business website get found in relevant search results, especially as you work on your link building and other SEO techniques. For example, a  domain name that uses the keywords a person would use to search for a business like yours will have a much better chance to reach the top search engine results than a vague domain/business name.

[click_to_tweet tweet=”Your domain name is a #marketing tool: here’s how to use it to your advantage #marketingtips” quote=”Your domain name is a #marketing tool: here’s how to use it to your advantage #marketingtips”]

Let’s say we have an online business that sells sneakers from various brands. Now, if the name of the business is “Every Sneaker Store”, the domain www.everysneaker.store (available for less than $5 at this point) conveys exactly what the website is about.

godaddy

Now compare that to www.everysneaker.com (only available through a broker as the domain has already been registered); The original buyer may then quote a price which may be beyond the financial reach of a new business owner.

godaddy

One could get www.everybusinessstore.com but that would not only make the domain longer, but it would also be confusing with the triple sss.

So, a brandable domain extension such as .store not only tells your audience exactly what they’ll get on your website, but it also helps you get a shorter, memorable domain name that is more intuitive for the search engines.

“But, I already have a domain name!”

should you get a custom domain if you already have a domain

Well, did you know that you can increase traffic to specific product pages on your website by branding them right? Here’s what I mean.

Let’s say you have a new product that you wish to promote on social media and build a higher recall for it amongst your potential customers. You could build a contextual redirect for it and promote that on social media. For instance, when you type www.kindle.store you land on Amazon’s official Kindle store page which has a pretty long and awkward deep-link:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html/ref=as_li_ss_tl?node=133141011&linkCode=sl2&tag=amznip-kindle.store-20&linkId=4cd0d831c10ebb77bbf4aeeb9b352a3a

This is a great way to attract more traffic to the product page by placing the memorable redirect link on social media posts. Do this for your product page and it will help you get more traffic and more conversions, rather than if you were sharing a long and confusing link or an unbranded one.

Not to mention, as voice search is becoming increasingly popular (and studies show that it will continue to grow rapidly in the next couple of years), it’s becoming increasingly important that your domain name is easy to understand when spoken by all the various artificial assistants: Siri, Alexa and the like.

If your domain name includes odd spellings and numbers, it will be much harder for virtual assistants to find your website and instead, they’ll take people to your competitors.

The emergence of new domain names

.COM used to be the main domain extension that everyone wanted to get. But now -or rather, since 2012 -, there are a lot more options available – and many of them are much better than a simple .COM domain name.

Businesses and organizations of all kinds can now choose domain names that truly complement what they do: a blog or news website can use .PRESS instead of .ORG or .COM. A tech business can choose a domain name on .TECH. And the modern retailer and e-commerce business can use a highly effective domain name: Yourbrand.STORE.

Not only does it tell the visitor exactly what you do and what they’ll find on your website, but it also means you won’t have to compromise on your brand name just to get a .COM extension. Because if anyone has tried to buy a domain name in the last few years, they’ve surely come about at least a couple of problems: either the domain name you want costs a fortune or it isn’t available at all (as many as 65% of domain name check availabilities fail!) and you need to get creative.

The problem with getting “creative” with your domain name is that you’re essentially making it harder for people to find you. I’ve already mentioned how it can hinder your success when it comes to voice search and artificial assistants. But the same thing can happen with regular searches: people who want to search for your brand but can’t find it because your domain name is too difficult to remember.

[click_to_tweet tweet=”Your domain name is a #marketing tool: the emergence of new domain names #marketingtips” quote=”Your domain name is a #marketing tool: the emergence of new domain names #marketingtips”]

How to leverage a .STORE domain name to build a strong retail brand

how to get a .store domain name for your retail or ecommerce business

Choosing a domain name for your retail or eCommerce store website is a big decision since it will be the key touchpoint between you and your customers. And I recommend .STORE because the word “store” is intuitively associated with retail.

Here are some cool ideas on how you can choose a .STORE domain for your business:

  • [BusinessName].store
  • [Industry].store
  • [Name+IndustryNiche].store
  • [Industry+Geo].store
  • [Product+Geo].store
  • [Phrase].store

.store domain name examples

The .STORE suffix is also ideal for brands who might not be in retail or e-commerce primarily, but have a merchandise store. If they want to redirect more people to their merch store, then they can achieve this by creating a simple, memorable domain name like www.emirates.store.

Emirates might sell flights primarily, but they also build up their brand  with their merchandise store, www.emirates.store – exactly what people would search for online if they wanted to get some Emirates merch: “emirates store”:

emirates.store

This not only makes it easier for new people to find your store/website, but it also makes it easier for your existing audience to revisit your website.

Plus, as I mentioned before, a .STORE domain name will also have a positive impact on your SEO: these new domain names are recognized by search engines and because of their keyword-rich friendly nature, they will help boost your rankings.

How to drive more business to your store using a .store domain

How to drive more business to your store using a .store domain

One of my favourite things about these new domain names  is that they bring a massive feature to the table: mobility. A feature that will boost your branding exponentially, as well as help you generate more traffic and most importantly, more conversions.

Let me give you a few examples of this in action and how exactly it can help your business:

  • The convergence of offline and online marketing: if you’re promoting your website (or a specific product) with offline marketing – say, in a magazine – keeping the link memorable and as simple as possible is essential. For example, if NBC were to take out a billboard to promote Jimmy Fallon’s merchandise they would – technically – have to use this link: https://www.nbcstore.com/shop-by-show/the-tonight-show-starring-jimmy-fallon.html. A long, drawn-out link that no-one would actually remember. If, on the other hand, they used something like http://www.nbc.store/jimmy, it would be much more likely that people would actually remember the website name and visit it later on, therefore driving more traffic from the offline to the online
  • Your social media presence: when you use short links on social media, you’re effectively losing an opportunity to further build your brand and make more conversions from social media. A branded link on social media can not only bring more visibility to your brand, but it will also help you build trust in your brand and increase your conversions: a bit.ly study found that branded links can lead to a 34% increase in your click-through rate. So instead of using long, drawn-links or unbranded shortened links, you can use something like this:

custom domain name examples

  • Create memorable redirects: if you want to promote different parts of your website – let’s say, for example, your special offers – you can use new domain names to create intuitive and memorable domain names that will redirect to your much longer and much more complicated link. For example, instead of promoting this link – https://trustarts.org/pct_home/support/membership/restaurant-discounts – you can promote something like www.memberdiscount.store which is much easier to remember and type in, to redirect to the website page in question
  • Better backlinks: whether someone is writing a review of your products or simply mentioning one of your products in their content, it’s best to use short, simple and contextual domain names to avoid broken links, as well as to boost your SEO. In other words, instead of using a link like this:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07B725M81/ref=s9u_ri_gw_i5?ie=UTF8&fpl=fresh&pd_rd_i=B07B725M81&pd_rd_r=3e5de0dc-ad0d-11e8-89e5-d3f364e718bd&pd_rd_w=cZbIK&pd_rd_wg=jfDI4&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=&pf_rd_r=X2DB89PP57F73YJ9PAYQ&pf_rd_t=36701&pf_rd_p=a2d79bc4-36f0-49c4-96ee-f7d75fc12c45&pf_rd_i=desktop

This is a link for “WateLves beach socks” on Amazon. This is an extremely long and clunky link which is difficult to publicise or include in marketing material. The brand could instead use a contextual domain, perhaps something like watelves.store to redirect users to its Amazon page and watelves.store/aquasocks to redirect users to the product page.

Why is this helpful?

  • It’s easier to use these links in social media images, tweets, etc.
  • For Instagram marketing, you can use this short links in the photo or photo caption, instead of “link in bio”
  • It’s great for brand visibility on social media

Domain redirects are the most effective way of linking offline marketing to your online presence.

[click_to_tweet tweet=”How to drive more business to your store using a .store domain #marketingtips #sales” quote=”How to drive more business to your store using a .store domain #marketingtips #sales”]

Conclusion

The reality is, a lot of businesses are massively underutilizing their domain names. This gives your brand a great opportunity to not only stand out, but also generate better results for your business, from an increase in website traffic and click-through rates to an increase in sales and conversions.

It’s as easy as this: make it easier for your audience to find you online and it will help grow your business.

Get your .store domain

Get your .store domain

Every good store needs a good domain name. With retail moving online, finding the perfect domain name has become more important but also challenging.

Here’s why over 230,000+ businesses have chosen .store domains:

  • Memorable: Helps customers remember you as a store
  • Relevant: Associates your site with retail & eCommerce
  • Brandable: Enhances your brand’s character and personality
  • Short: High availability of good quality short names
  • SEO-friendly: Is recognised by search engines

Major brands such as Emirates, Nike, and Amazon are already using .store domains. Join the club and get yours today at just $4.99 on get.store using the coupon LILACH.

Get your .store domain

.store is also available at all leading domain registrars and web hosts such as Go Daddy, Namecheap, and Name.com. You can also get your .store domain directly through eCommerce store builders such as Shopify, Squarespace, and Wix.

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About Lilach Bullock


Hi, I’m Lilach, a serial entrepreneur! I’ve spent the last 2 decades starting, building, running, and selling businesses in a range of niches. I’ve also used all that knowledge to help hundreds of business owners level up and scale their businesses beyond their beliefs and expectations.

I’ve written content for authority publications like Forbes, Huffington Post, Inc, Twitter, Social Media Examiner and 100’s other publications and my proudest achievement, won a Global Women Champions Award for outstanding contributions and leadership in business.

My biggest passion is sharing knowledge and actionable information with other business owners. I created this website to share my favorite tools, resources, events, tips, and tricks with entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, small business owners, and startups. Digital marketing knowledge should be accessible to all, so browse through and feel free to get in touch if you can’t find what you’re looking for!

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