Exposed: The domain name shame of failing firms

Businesses making the move online are falling at the very first hurdle, as too many fail to register an appropriate or memorable domain name.

Business is literally passing these companies by as users fail to find them online, and recent research has put the cost of those missed opportunities in the millions.

CommonName, a provider of keyword navigation and internet search services, commissioned research into internet users' opinions on companies' domain names.

Almost three quarters of respondents said they had tried and failed to find a company's online presence, while 71 per cent said they had switched to a rival company after failing to find the one they were looking for.

Seventy-four per cent of users assume a company's web address will be of the Companyname.com convention, and that is invariably the first guess, but a confusing use of hyphens and a proliferation of suffixes such as .co.uk, .net, and .tv have complicated matters to the point that many businesses are letting themselves be overlooked.

Michael Stroud, marketing manager for CommonName, said: "There are certainly a lot of variables out there which can make things very confusing for users."

The research found the majority of internet users (60 per cent) will have up to three goes at guessing a domain, but then they will move on elsewhere.

One strategy advised by Yurong Lin, CEO of CommonName, is to register as many variations of a domain name as possible. He said his company registered at least 40 different versions of its name, to ensure anybody guessing at the web address will likely find his company's site.