.co.uk or .com

[Rob Holmes]

Do you prefer to click on a .co.uk or a .com to make a purchase?

What are your views on each for advertising, memorability etc etc?

Has anyone ever experimented with both and found a bigger return off one or the other.

I'm asking with UK sales in mind :)

Rob

[Robert]

I don't really care. It's the professionalism of the site that makes be want to buy, not the TLD.

[crus]

From experience and wider established knowledge.

due to the way the UK market evolved its almost a stright split of 50% would type .com and 50% would type .co.uk for a major brand if they were trying to find a website.

I dont think this would effect uwer trust but anyone out there reading this buy your .com and .co.uk!

D

[DuaneJackson]

.coms are better for memorability. But I am more comfortable buying from a.co.uk.

So I guess ideally buy both -advertise offline using the .com and a union jack and online rewrite it to a .co.uk

[Magsite]

.co.uk for me!

Lisa

[multilingual]

Ours are primarily UK based clients looking for a UK based service, so we have had more success with .co.uk than with .com, simply when it comes down to internet search returns.

JB

[Jayne]

Before I joined this forum, I didn't even notice the .com or .co.uk thing, didn't even know what it was for, I guessed it was like a telephone number google gave out when you bought a website.

I know now how wrong I was thinking this, but how many other 1000's of none techy public who spend on the web, think something like I did?

Personally, I think it only makes a difference to other web business people, Joe public couldn't care less!

Jayne :D

[creospace]

If the company is a uk based company I would always recomend a .co.uk domain to begin with, after all it is a british company!

[Frenchiexno1]

I think .com captures a larger market though and doesnt confine wo just the uk.....?

I would buy both so that if your site is good someone doesnt steal the other address

[fastfences]

To me it provides instant advice of location. If I'm 'Googling' for a company, I will always seek out .co.uk.

from an advertising and security perspective, I'll buy both.(and others)Cheers, Nigel

[Mac Yeti]

Yep, I agree, use the .co.uk and buy the .com

[GaryReid]

I think it does depend on the company, if it is 100% web based .com seems to the best bet, if the web presence is more bricks n clicks and the company is uk based then .co.uk seems to be better.

We have a client that provides enterprise training, they already had a .com domain but because most of their clients were within 50 miles of their base they were typing in the company's name and .co.uk

For those who compete in 'global' markets, like yours matrixx, the .co.uk gives a geographic definition for users, from my experience this puts off USA buyers, they start thinking in terms of 'GMT'. Of course with all of the geo-ip services it's now really easy to serve up pages based on the users location automatically - send the uk visitors to .co.uk and the rest of the world to the .com

Back in 2001 I started a VPS service under a .co.uk domain, the customer base was 40% uk, whereas, for our normal hosting, under .com, the uk base was 15%. When I changed the vps service to both .com and .co.uk (but .com as the main) the uk base fell to around 20% but sales quadrupled. But that was a hell of a long time ago and things have moved on a lot since then. In those days the USA thought our ISP services ran on string and tin cans and assumed that if it was a .co.uk the servers were in the UK. Now having UK based servers is a premium.

Of course for brand protection it's probably wise to have .com and .co.uk otherwise some joker may try and piggy back on your success. I had that problem back in 2000 with Blue Box Internet when all of a sudden Blue Box xxxxx sites started springing up, so it cost me around $200 a year just to keep all of the relevent .com .net .co.uk names