The more I study the subject of domains, the more I am amazed by the various personalities a domain carries, so today I’ll share with you seven of them.
First and foremost, a domain is a digital address. I have talked about this concept in many of my articles. When you look at domains from the perspective of addresses, then you know there are prime addresses which are very valuable commercial real estate. .com is the commercial real estate and that’s why major brands in the world can be found in the .com land.
Domain is global because the internet is global by its very nature. Therefore, if you can use a domain to reach the entire world, then why not do it on the very first day of your new business? This means using the English+dotCom strategy because English is the global language and .com the global extension. An example is SenseTime (商湯), the highest valued AI startup in the world. SenseTime is a Chinese company but it prefers the English+dotCom strategy (SensteTime.com).
Domain is part of your brand. While traditional branding focuses on “what”, domain adds the “where” dimension to it. For example, when consumers think of Baby Tree (宝宝树), they think of the parenting services they can get, and they can get the services at BabyTree.com. Read “Branding 2.0 and domains” for detailed discussion.
Domain gives you email addresses. Even today, email is still the dominant tool used in business communication. You have complete control of your email unlike an account with Wechat or Facebook. Domain is the foundation of email addresses. For example, since I own the domain Coreile.com, I can create email addresses to suit my business, such as editor@coreile.com, pr@coreile.com, and ceo@coreile.com.
Domain can be your digital business card. Read “Domain name — CEO’s future business card” and see how I designed mine. A domain and a QR code are all you need for your new business card. Such business cards are very versatile and you can change your personal information at any time (Note: “domain” and “domain names” have the same meaning, but lately I have chosen to use the former term for simplicity reason.)
Domain is your next-generation app. Unlike a traditional app which you need to download from the app store and then install on your mobile phone, a domain enables you to create a universal app which works with all mobile phones and does not require any download/install/update work. This is made possible using the powerful Progressive Web App (PWA) technology. Major brands such as Starbucks and Pinterest have moved into this direction, and I see it as a major trend.
Finally, domain is a function. This creative idea was introduced by Google recently as time-saving trick for starting docs, slides, sheets, and forms. If you are a regular user of Google Drive, instead of having to navigate to Google Drive, click “New” and select “Google Docs”, you can now just type the domain “doc.new” in your browser and a new doc will appear. Here are some other domains that you can use: form.new (create a form), sheet.new (create a sheet), slides.new (create a slide)
In summary, domain is a powerful tool which enables anyone to start a global business. So, choose your domain carefully.
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