NZ Domain Name Registration

Registering a domain name for your website used to be both a time consuming and expensive exercise. Fortunately that's all changed due to intense competition between domain name registrars in New Zealand and overseas.

Nowadays registering a domain name is a quick and simple process and the costs are incredibly low. So low that practically all website owners can easily afford their own unique domain name rather than using their ISP's domain.

Having your own domain name is important for a number of reasons.

• It makes your website appear more credible.

• By selecting an appropriate domain name you can reinforce your own brand name (e.g. www.yourname.co.nz), rather than that of your ISP (e.g. www.your-isp.co.nz/yourname/)

• Search engines generally won't index sites hosted under umbrella domain names like that shown above.

If you are registering a domain name it's often prudent to also register alternative versions of the domain name at the same time. Sure, it costs more, but can be well worthwhile for the reasons mentioned below.

People Guess Web Addresses
After search engines one of the most common way people find websites is simply by guessing the URL. Really!

DoubleClick did research in March 2003 which asked consumers “How did you find the product website you used to research a purchase?” More than one-quarter of consumers (28%) reported guessing URLs to visit sites. DoubleClick concluded that "Marketers without easily identifiable URLs are likely losing consumers who find it too difficult to get to their site".

This means that if you have well known brand or product names these are likely to be searched on. An example of this is "PowerPoint", the presentation software in MS Office. Enter www.powerpoint.com into your browser and you'll see you get re-directed to Microsoft's Office website.

For the same reason it can sometimes be worth securing generic domain names that describe your industry or product category.

Competitors stealing your web traffic
If you registered xyzcompany.co.nz (fictitious example) it you might also want to register xyzcompany.com, xyzcompany.net, and xyzcompany.biz etc. The reason for this is primarily to ensure your competitors don't grab these domain names and siphon off traffic that should be coming to your website (it happens!).

Misspellings
Another reason for multiple domain names is if you have a frequently misspelled name. An example is Vodafone NZ whose main domain name is vodafone.co.nz. They've registered alternative names like vodaphone.co.nz to cover people misspelling vodafone as vodaphone.

Cyber-squatters
Also "cyber-squatters" frequently grab domain names and try to hold the "rightful" owners ransom. i.e. they'll sell it to you at an exorbitant price and may even threaten to point it at a porn site. In the latter case people typing www.xyzcompany.com and expecting your company website would instead find themselves looking at something rather nasty. This of course undermines your brand and credibility.

You can of course take legal action against cyber-squatters to get the ransomed domain name and this is something many major brand names have had to do (recent examples are Microsoft and Google). The reality is that it's a time-consuming exercise and the legal costs are much higher than registering alternative domain names in the first place.

At Viz Marketing we've registered domain names for clients using a range of different domain name registrars in New Zealand and overseas. Prices and service levels have ranged significantly (literally from excellent to terrible).

As a result the one we now invariably use is called FreeParking. They're a New Zealand domain name registration firm who are able to register both New Zealand and various international domains (.com .net, .biz, .info, .org, .co.uk, .me.uk, .org.uk). Their prices are competitive and the service we've had has been excellent.  

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 NZ Domain Name Registration