Small businesses in the UK are registering their company name without thinking about what domain name they will require.
Research has found that 22 per cent of firms go to Companies House – where all limited UK companies have to be registered – before checking whether their preferred suffix is available, SME Web reports. In 21 per cent of cases, organizations are forced to accept a domain that is not related to their company.
This brings the issue of web presence to the fore, as firms are not doing enough to look after their online operations. Instead of securing the relevant .com and .co.uk URLs at the start of the process, they are adopting a scattergun approach that will ultimately make brand protection trickier.
On top of this, 63 per cent of respondents admitted they did not even register their company name until it was established. This risky attitude could see brands forced to start from scratch if they cannot get the rights to the name they have been using.
However, just over one-third (35 per cent) of those questioned are displaying a proactive attitude to their brand, as they are registering their preferred domain name before they even launch their business.
Some 49 per cent have taken the additional step of registering multiple domain names to protect their company name, while it also leaves the door open to expanding the business further down the line.
Juan Diego Calle, chief executive of .CO Internet, recently told Tech World that domain extensions are now more important than phone numbers as they are what many organizations are identified by.
“As more and more [companies] invest and build awareness like we are, eventually that will reach the consumer and website owners will begin to accept that building a website on something other than .com is OK,” he added.