Classic domain names/web addresses followed by the traditional .com are starting to look old and, in the last two years a few companies have been adopting their name as their web address in a .brand format. After all, if your name is "Johnson" and you are an attorney, a "johnson.attorney" domain will immediately indicate the nature of your business and will be less vague than "johnson.com".
The list of new domains is long and includes .help, .link, .movie, .style, .clothing, .shoes, .fashion and .maison among the others.
Different brands and companies have been taking advantage of the new TLD (top level domains): Lady Gaga went for bornthisway.foundation for her non-profit organisation; three years ago Access Fashion Media's parisfashionweek.com became parisfashionweek.buzz, a domain extension that symbolised the frantic pace of the fashion industry, while a landmark opted for a .city domain – check out toureiffel.paris (rather than tour-eiffel.com).
Yet while the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the non-profit organisation accountable for the distribution of domain names, received thousands of applications, they were fewer than expected.
So, while some business ventures and companies (think about the automotive sector) were keener to grab the brand TLDs, fashion companies and conglomerates have been rather slow. Lost in a whirlwind of fashion weeks, busy posting on Instagram, or focused on concepts like the see-now-buy-now craze and useless wearables like smart watches, working on their e-commerce sites and on improving digital sales, deeply confused by relatively new concepts like algorithms playing at being designers, while still running after the latest fashion blogger and influencer capable of converting consumers' "likes" into sales, fashion houses seem to be missing the TLD opportunity.
Yes, it is true that .com are still the most popular TLDs and consumers have grown accustomed to them; at the same time a .brand web address can offer more opportunities to a fashion company's marketing and digital strategy. Apart from being a shorter and easier way to remember the URL, new TLDs would allow branded corporations to use their corporate name as their site top-level identifier (in place of the more traditional .com, .net or even .biz domain space), so, in a way, it would be a bit like adding a logo to the website name, increasing maybe security against trademark abuses, while at the same time changing brand awareness among consumers and improving marketing strategies.
It will undoubtedly take time for users to adjust to the changes, while re-educating consumers via campaigns and marketing may end up being expensive for some companies (that's maybe why most of them are not embarking in this new venture), but, being unique, new domain extensions may effectively increase the number of visitors to a site.
Maybe fashion houses should consider how some companies use the new TLDs as a primary domain, while others employ them for e-mail or for catchy and creative URL shorteners, a way to shorten the URL while maintaining brand consistency. Bitly adopts Branded Short Domains (BSDs) under their Bitly Enterprise product offering and, according to a case study published by the company a while back, Branded Short Domains (BSD) consistently saw a 34% increase in click through rates (CTR).
Doubting the power of new TLDs is understandable, but it may be about time for some fashion companies to open up their perspectives and being creative also for what regards their domain names and not just for what concerns their product lines.
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