Let’s begin with a story.

In late 2015, Ethan quit his job as a corporate lawyer and moved from Dallas, Texas to New York City to pursue his lifelong dream of becoming a chef. At 33, it was a risky decision to move cities and careers. He had recently broken up with his girlfriend of four years; and making the big switch seemed like the only way he could get his emotional life back on track. Once in New York, he enrolled in a culinary school and had the opportunity to assist some of the most promising chefs in the city. Today, he has his own successful restaurant in Hell’s Kitchen and is engaged-to-be-married!

Who are we talking about?

Chances are you don’t remember the name of the person whose story you just read. Since a name by itself does not communicate much meaningful information, the mind tends to not register it. This is the reason why businesses use storytelling as a tool for branding, marketing and selling. It helps them create a lasting impression in the minds of their target customer. Coming up with a business name is therefore a strategic decision because of the story that it tells. This applies also to the choice of business’ domain name since it’s the primary identity of any business on the Internet.

In this post, we will explore how you can use domain names to brand your eCommerce business in a way that tells a story.

Do domain names tell a story?

There are multiple ways to integrate domain names in your marketing strategy to tell engaging stories to your customers. Let us first understand a few terms associated with domains:

Primary domain name: A website’s name is its primary domain name. For example, www.amazon.com is Amazon’s primary domain name.

Deep-links: While a website’s primary domain name would usually take you to its homepage, a deep-link is the URL to one of its inner pages. For example,

https://www.amazon.com/Fire-HD-Tablet-Display-Wi-Fi/dp/B00KC6I06S/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&*Version*=1&*entries*=0&linkCode=sl1&tag=amaznip-store-ngtld-20&linkId=7cb7885fa2c10975c37c1abd614de852 is a deep-link on Amazon’s website for its Fire HD page.

Domain redirects: When a domain name is used to redirect to a deep-link on a website, it is called a domain redirect. For example, www.firehd.store is a contextual domain-redirect for the deep-link mentioned above.

Branded links: A brand can use a custom URL to brand all of its shortened links. For example, https://amzn.to/2LyDl9F is a branded link to the same deep-link to Amazon’s Fire HD page.

How to find the perfect primary domain name for your eCommerce business

Often, the decision to choose a particular brand name depends on the corresponding availability of its matching domain name. When the domain name is not available on .COM, business owners tend to compromise on their chosen brand name and settle for something less attractive and desirable. However, that is hardly any issue now that the Internet has expanded to other domain extensions that are meant for specific industries. For instance, there’s .TECH for technology, .PRESS for press and media, and .STORE for retail and eCommerce.

Since these extensions are fairly new, there’s also a high probability that you will find your desirable domain name on these extensions. This allows you to choose a domain name that is short, relevant and meaningful. For example, www.xion.com may not tell you what the website is about but www.xion.store will immediately convey that it’s a store.

Tips on choosing a primary domain name for your eCommerce business

When choosing a domain name, make sure you keep the following tips in mind in order to make your domain name work in your favor from a branding point of view:

• Keep it free of hyphens and misspellings
• Keep it limited to two or three words
• Do the domain name radio test before you finalise
• Ensure you don’t use a previously copyrighted brand name

Marketing and branding benefits of choosing a primary domain name on a new domain extension are:

• Keyword rich: New domain extensions make your domain name keyword rich. For example, www.dronesmexico.tech conveys that it is a tech business based in Mexico and deals in drones.
• Short: As you’re likely to find your desirable domain name in a new domain extension, you get a short domain name devoid of unnecessary characters. The best part? Google prefers short domains. If there are two identical websites, Google’s search engine algorithm would pick the one with a shorter domain name.
• SEO-focused: New domain extensions make it possible to get on-topic backlinks which are great for SEO. For instance, it’s more contextual to get a backlink on www.firehd.store for anchor text ‘Fire HD store’ than to the original deep-link to the Fire HD page on Amazon. Over time, this gives a green signal to Google about the relevance of the page for the keywords ‘Fire HD store’ and it starts showing up in the organic search results for those keywords.
• Meaningful: New domain extensions add a layer of meaning to the domain name which helps build a visual story in the mind of the customer, making the domain name memorable.

How to integrate domain names into your eCommerce marketing strategy

Domain names are largely underutilised as a marketing tool for businesses. Here are some ways in which you can make the most of domain names to add more effectiveness to your marketing efforts.

1) Product reviews, backlinks and SEO juice

Contextual domain redirects are a boon for eCommerce businesses, especially when it comes to product reviews on other blogs and social media. For example, you want customers to review a product you sell but the deep link to the product page looks like this:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07B725M81/ref=s9u_ri_gw_i5?ie=UTF8&fpl=fresh&pd_rd_i=B07B725M81&pd_rd_r=3e5de0dc-ad0d-11e8-89e5-d3f364e718bd&pd_rd_w=cZbIK&pd_rd_wg=jfDI4&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=&pf_rd_r=X2DB89PP57F73YJ9PAYQ&pf_rd_t=36701&pf_rd_p=a2d79bc4-36f0-49c4-96ee-f7d75fc12c45&pf_rd_i=desktop

You can choose a domain name such as www.aquasocks.store or www.aquasocks.store/beach to redirect to your product page (on your website or on Amazon, Etsy, etc) and share that domain name with the product reviewers. This will help you enrich your product page SEO in two ways:

a) A contextual, pronounceable domain name minimises the risk of broken backlinks.
b) Since the product name ‘aqua socks for beach’ is included in the domain name, it’s great for getting on-topic backlinks. Over time, search engines will establish a strong, positive connect between the keywords ‘aqua socks for beach’ and the domain name www.aquasocks.store/beach (provided there is good quality content and relevant images on the page about the product).

2) Offline marketing vs online marketing

One of the biggest challenges that domain names solve is seamlessly connecting your offline marketing with your online presence. For example, if you have invested in promoting a specific product category in local newspapers or through a pamphlet, you can include a short, memorable domain name to that category page instead of giving the link to your website’s homepage.

For example, if NBC wanted to promote their page for Jimmy Fallon’s official show merchandise, the actual link would look like this:

https://www.nbcstore.com/shop-by-show/the-tonight-show-starring-jimmy-fallon.html

Instead, NBC can include a domain redirect such as www.nbc.store/jimmy which is memorable, pronounceable and will effectively drive traffic from offline to online.

3) Offers and discounts

A fantastic way to use domain names to entice your existing and new customers is to create a dedicated page for all of your active discounts and offers applicable on your store. For example, if your promotions page link is long and complicated such as the link below, it will be difficult for customers to type in your discounts page.

https://trustarts.org/pct_home/support/membership/restaurant-discounts

Customers can either bookmark it on their browser or they can visit your website homepage and then find the discounts page. However, to really make sure that your promotions page is always in the customer’s memory, you can use a suitable domain redirect such as www.memberdiscount.store

Not only is it a keyword-rich, intuitive domain name; it will also make your page rank higher in organic searches over time if it is updated regularly with new and relevant information.

4) Social media link sharing

To help make your conversion-driven social media marketing more effective, you can use branded links in your social posts. Brand links are great opportunities for you to bring more visibility to your brand name and build link-trust. To understand this better, take a look at these links:

1. pep.si/BV
2. nyti.ms/2PDlsJs
3. swoo.sh/2Q9Fi00
4. apple.co/2MSQU9K

Just by looking at these links you can guess which brands they belong to. Not only are they great for brand visibility, but branded links can also increase CTRs by up to 34%. Most URL shortening services today allow you to choose the branded link option.

Conclusion

Domain names are more than just the website address. As the fight for consumers’ attention and mindshare continues, memorable domain names can work as effective brand touch-points in your digital marketing plan. Whether you are launching a new product or want to make your social media marketing more effective, integrate creative domain names in your strategy to win more customers.