Domain names play a key role in building credibility online and a range of factors, including length, spelling, and domain extension as well as the presence of unexpected characters (hyphens or numbers) can impact consumer trust. To give brands a clear measure of the impact of domains, we asked a simple question: have consumers ever chosen not to purchase from a business because of its domain?

By Thom Davies

In the digital world, consumers are familiar with certain patterns and the exact-match domain plus .com template is the gold-standard for finding brands online. We sought to understand how often consumers encounter the wrong destination when using the common “[brand].com” navigation pattern, and to identify where they end up when an exact-match .com domain does not lead to the intended brand. This research explores the potential for domains to divert consumer traffic to competitors, unrelated businesses, and other destinations, and can guide new businesses in shortlisting, validating, and selecting the strongest possible domain to minimize traffic leak.

By Thom Davies

Memorability and spelling are two key criteria that come hand in hand for brand names and domains, and have a significant impact on how consumers find you online. Despite their importance, both trademark concerns as well as domain scarcity place competing pressures on brands choosing a domain name, as longer domains or those with alternative spellings may be more available or affordable.

By Thom Davies

Business investors, including VCs and private equity investors, are key stakeholders in early-stage startups, and demonstrating strength and ambition to this group is essential for founders. To learn more about how domains impact real-world outcomes, we asked this audience to rate how a weak domain impacts these metrics. Combined with our research into how a weak domain harms revenue, marketing ROI, and other business outcomes, this research can support entrepreneurs’ decision-making and resource allocation around domain names in the early days of their business.

By Thom Davies

A brand’s domain name is its chance to make a strong first impression on its audience. This research aims to increase understanding about how consumers use domain names as a trust signal when encountering a brand for the first time, and identify which domain characteristics most strongly influence credibility and first impressions. Our results help brands to determine the significance of domain names in trust-building exercises and to tailor their choices to target demographic expectations.

By Thom Davies

Our past research has revealed that founders think strong brand names and domains impact revenue in a wide range of ways, from customer recall to word-of-mouth recommendations. To explore this connection between name and revenue, we asked our audience of founders whether they think strong names and domains impact marketing spend, and, if so, how much more weakly-named brands must spend to compensate. This data should help entrepreneurs calculate further the potential return on investment of a strong domain, as it leads to greater revenues and more impactful marketing spend.

By Thom Davies