By Sampad Swain
The saying “it takes two to tango” cannot be truer for D2C brands. When entrepreneurs aspire to make their products D2C brands, they struggle to create a great business offering while also struggling to find the right domain name to create their online brand identity.
D2C brands have been redefining brand-consumer equity where consumers have become psychological co-owners of the brand, being part of the brand journey from the beginning. With more than 190 million online shoppers in India, more entrepreneurs want to cut a share of the pie by creating their own D2C brands. However, the unavailability of perceivably credible domain extensions like .coms and .ins is discouraging thousands, if not millions of entrepreneurs.
However, new-age domain extensions can be one of the ingredients for D2C brands to set up their online identity and cut through the clutter. Bending it right can really reap dividends in the long term, especially for relatively smaller brands with ambitions of scaling up and picking pace. However, strategising on picking the right domain name can be trickier than you think and it requires making the right steps in the D2C Domain Dance.
Blend Availability with Creativity, do not pick one over the other
The first major challenge of the D2C Domain Dance is picking between availability and creativity. D2C brands can have the most creative brand names but might not get it as a domain name. In this case they either have to pick an irrelevant domain extension or change their brand name. One way to overcome this challenge is to blend availability with creativity and the best way to do this is to make part of the brand name, a domain extension. New-age domain extensions help a brand to do just that. Let’s take the example of a hypothetical brand that sells Anime franchises called Anime World. While this is a good brand name, they might not find the domain name animeworld.com, but they can make the domain name anime world. Making a part of the brand name a domain extension can not only make your brand identity intuitive in the online space but also make the domain name a lot crisper for the consumer.
Shareable and Relatable coupled together is the new credible
The second challenge in the D2C dance is finding the balance between making your brand name relatable and credible at the same time. Many entrepreneurs think that if you do not have conventional domain extensions, your brand will not be considered credible. In this mindset, people forget that credibility does not come from the domain extension but more from how many times the consumer sees the brand name pop up in their search results with multiple studies showing that domain extensions do not impact your SEO, what brands need to realise is making your domain name shareable and relatable is the new equation to make the brand credible.
So, play creative, dare to leap beyond the obvious and get a domain name that is relevant, shareable and close to your brand name. What that really does is helps you enter consumer memory faster and stay glued longer. One way to make your brand shareable and relatable is to have different variations of your domain name for different use cases. For example, if you are selling athleisure wear called fit club, then you can have a main domain name called fit. club, to sell shoes you can have a brand called runfit.club, for gym wear you can have strengthfit.club all of which can redirect to specific pages of the websites. This makes the brand more relatable to different audiences.
Avoid confusion and keep it simple to win the trust
As a D2C brand, consumers are key to you and to make it easy for them, avoid double letters, characters or numbers unless absolutely mandatory and it’s part of your brand nomenclature. In fact, keeping it simple and easy is a great way for you to score over the competition in winning consumer trust and forging better and more long-term equity with this stakeholder cohort that matters most.
To cut to the chase, investing in the right domain name can lead to higher traffic and better revenues in the long run. By rendering a unique identity to a brand, the right domain name can help liven up a brand’s online presence which is something that one can not choose to ignore, especially when growth is a priority. Add to that the advantage of higher traffic and engagement which can eventually lead to better brand affinity and in many cases higher conversions.
Domain marketing can actually open up an entire Pandora’s box of limitless possibilities for D2C brands to establish a robust online presence, bolster brand identity, engage better with consumers and drive targeted traffic. And a country such as India boasts of a staggering 190 million online shoppers truly personifies the potential of limitless growth. What matters is how prudently we leverage domain marketing strategies that help us find not only our sweet spot but also let us hang in there long enough for us to realise our business success.
The author is co-founder and CEO at Instamojo