Do you know the value of your domain name

Have you been asking the right questions to your business? And then searching to find the right answers?

Have you ever put an exact value on a new customer who will stay with you and your business for an entire lifetime? Or have you tried to?

Well, you will find a struggle in achieving that calculation without looking closer to home first and at the value of YOUR domain. Your DOMAIN and your WEBSITE play direct roles in attracting new customers to your business. They act as key parts of your digital shopfront and help in gaining new customers. You can then work out the lifetime value of new customers. By working out new Customers Each Day X 365 X Years = The Lifetime Value

So let’s then take for example a new customer sign up is worth £100 to your business. If you were to gain a new customer each day, that would be a value of £36,500 to your business each year. From just ONE new customer each day.

And now think if you were to try and grow and attract two, three or even five new customers a day. The lifetime value of each day of new acquisition grows drastically.

Let’s break this down over x amount of years

1 Customer a day for 365 days = £36,500 a year.
5 Customers a day for 365 days = £182,500 a year.
5 Customers a day for 2 years (730 days) = £365,000 a year.
10 Customers a day for 5 years (1,825 days) = £1,825,000 a year.

As you can see above your domain name is a vital part of your online marketing strategy.

So look at your domain today and look at the role it plays in your business and say to yourself this:

“If i own the wrong domain name, can i beat my competitors online?”

Domains have been soaring in value in recent years. And the market is also expanding. Gone are the days where you only had the option of .co.uk and .com. Many other domain extensions have now appeared that help businesses target their customers quickly and help to grow their brand. However many businesses continue to ask themselves the same question, and that is how do they make their domain valuable? And specifically a .UK domain.

Well, today we are going to take a look at the factors you need to take into consideration when both assessing and improving the value of a domain. Now typically, only TLD (top-level domains) were seen as the most valuable. These were typically .net, .com or .co.uk. However, that is no longer the case. Sometimes other domains such as .UK can be valuable depending upon how sought after and valuable they are.

The next way to assess what makes your domain valuable is to look at the popularity and traffic. Websites that have a track record of gaining traffic and popularity will have an increased value. It shows any potential buyers that there is intrinsic value in the website they are going to be buying and there is an audience there and waiting.

Length also plays a big part in the value of a domain. When you’re having to type a domain, nobody enjoys having to type a long address. You want a short punchy website that is easy to remember and can be typed in. Therefore the shorter your domain is the more valuable it is going to be. It’s also the reason that a lot of people rush to three-letter website names as soon as they are released.

This is also, in part, why .UK domains are starting to become more popular than their .co.uk counterparts. If your business is called EasyMoney, a website domain as www.easymoney.uk sounds a lot punchier and quicker to the point rather than www.easymoney.co.uk. It also means less typing for the customer and is a lot more succinct.

As .UK domains have been released a lot more recently onto the market their value is still a lot less than their .com counterparts purely due to how long they have been on the market. And so now is the perfect time to get your hands on .UK domain names whilst they are cheaper and are going to be rising in value over the next 5 years as they start to surge in popularity and people look to divert away from .co.uk and .com domain names which have a much more clustered market.

Another reason .UK domains are set to get more valuable is as people who have .com websites look to snatch their .UK counterparts before others do. This way when people land on their .UK websites they can have them redirect to their main website, therefore extending their reach on the internet and maximising their traffic.

However, in fact, this is not actually needed. If you own a .co.uk domain, as it is still referred to as a top-level domain, you don’t have to worry about a rival snatching your .UK counterpart as it is protected. Nevertheless, for the benefits that we have covered already are enough to drive businesses to purchase other variants of their original TLD and set them to redirect to one central website.

A reason why the value of .UK domains are rising is that they are seen as more affordable than what is perceived as the more ‘premium’ types of domains such as .com and .co.uk. And therefore the affordable price has led to them becoming a lot more popular and sought after. And of course thanks to the laws of supply and demand, they subsequently will start to rise in price and so now is the time to get your hands on a .UK domain.

After Nominet released the .UK domain extension, there was also a huge surge of businesses rushing to buy these domains. However, over time there seemed to be a sudden drop-off, which has since picked up. However all of the domains that were included in this reject pile actually sought to be quite valuable. Businesses without thinking were literally throwing away money in the form of valuable domain names.

The release of .UK domain extensions have also seen an influx of people registering to become registered members of Nominet, allowing them to get .UK domain names earlier than those who were not members. Allowing them to snatch up valuable domain names before others.

In summary, there are many factors that can go into help decide just how valuable a domain can be or is. And it all depends in the end on demand. If you have a catchy domain name, people are going to want to buy it. If it suits a brand or a growing trend, you’re also in a healthy place to see your domain not only show value but start to grow in value.

Domains to some are really fruitful investments. Getting hold of valuable domain names ahead of a trend or change in popularity can make them a lot of money. Others will buy domain names with the intention of selling them to a company they know will eventually want them. Almost holding them to ransom until they start to make a good return on their investment.

If you want to know more about the value of getting yourself a .UK domain and what domains we have for sale, get in touch with a member of the team here at Laskos.com. The home of digital. We have plenty of domains available. Click here to find out more.