Domain Names And Branding: Your Guide To Branded TLDs

If you’re a budding marketer or an ecommerce newbie, then it’s likely that you’re struggling with navigating the world of domain name systems or DNS. If you’re here, you’ve probably undertaken the mammoth task of trying to understand and establish a domain name for a business or company you own or work with. Now, in your quest to find and establish the perfect domain name, you’ve probably come across some very unique terms.

TLDs, sub domains, hypertext protocol, IP addresses and what not. Now, if you know what they mean, then you’re good. If you don’t, you might want to do some more research around those terms to understand the domaining world a bit better.
But, for now you need only know what TLDs or Top Level Domains are. Specifically, general TLDs (GTLD) or Country Code TLDs (CcTLD) and how they can be replaced with the all new Branded TLDs that have flooded the market.

Having a competent domain service provider could better your chances of getting the best kind of domain name for your brand. Shopify allows for a customized and personalized experience, giving you and your business exactly what’s needed.

What Are TLDs? Why Branded?

Let’s start with what a TLD is. In the simplest terms possible, it is the part of the web address that comes after the last dot. So, yes all the .com, .net, and .org are TLDs. You might wonder that as far as this part of your web address goes, it’s pretty much out of your control.

That isn’t the case. When the internet started off there were a few select TLDs that all websites had to choose from. Besides the three most popular ones listed above, there were .gov, .mil, and .int to choose from- and that’s about it. However, those days are long gone. As of the most recent development, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has changed the game by allowing what we call Brand TLDs.

Welcome Brand TLDs

As you can probably guess by the name, a Brand TLD isn’t much different from a regular TLD in that it occupies the same place. However, instead of a being one of the many generic options already existing, it is the brand’s very trademark.
For example- Google is likely to have a domain that ends in ‘.google’.
As is probably obvious by now, that this is a proprietary service. Meaning that only the brand itself can use this TLD to register various subdomains, if and when needed. A good example of this is the ‘search.google’ subdomain.

Now, because this is a fairly new trend it is currently very difficult to assess its long term impacts- both positive and negative. So far, there have been no complaints or any other issues with brands who currently employ this system. If you’re considering the switch, here are a few benefits of having a Brand TLD.

Some Benefits Of Brand TLDs

●      Added Security

This is the first and most important benefit of having a brand TLD. Essentially the user or surfer of the webpage registered with a brand TLD rests assured that the webpage and details it hosts are owned and verified by the brand itself. This is especially useful if you have a business or company banking on complete trust of your customers- such as banks.

Barclays has plenty positives to add to the use of brand TLDs. They fully believe that this sets a whole new benchmark for added websecurity. This is especially true because well-known multinational brands are often victims of cybercrime. However, a brand TLD avoids that since the websites can never be truly duplicated.

●      Personalization

Another benefit is the freedom to personalize the experience of the brand. This goes both for users/customers and the employees of the brand itself. This comes on the basis of the fact that many brands simply don’t bother with content targeting and end up showing the same content to everyone.

Brand TLDs allow for a brand to offer a variety of services to the users of the webpage. For example, adding a personal brand experience for its users with a ‘my.brand name’ page. This can be taken a step further for the employees by offering them emails with the brand name and separate pages that are designed to give employees at different levels the right kind of authorization.

Of course, all of this comes with the added advantage of thousands of dollars worth of marketing everytime the branded domain name is shared or used.

References
http://www.circleid.com/posts/20160609_5_key_benefits_of_branded_tlds_according_brands/
https://www.econsultancy.com/blog/66191-brand-tlds-five-potential-benefits
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