Shocking: Verisign Backed Study Shows 80% Of Small Businesses Prefer .Com over New gTLD’s

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VRSN_SMB-gTLD-Study_Infographic_201406-Final

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The results of a survey of small- and medium-sized (SMB) business owners which already conduct business online, was released today by SCORE and Verisign, the registry of the .Com and .Net registries.

An inforgraphic was also published which appears above.

Unlike almost study I have read, I cannot find in any of the material how many SMB participated in the study,  how the study was conducted and what time frame the study was conducted.

According to this survey of small- and medium-sized (SMB) business owners already conducting business online:

4 out of 5 SMB website owners prefer a .com web address over a new gTLD web address.
81% of website owners believe new gTLDs will be confusing to their customers.
77% of SMB website owners prefer a .com web address over a new gTLDs that describes their business.
79% of Internet users would rather visit a .com will confuse customers.
66% of SMB website owners prefer a descriptive, longer .com web address to a shorter new gTLD address.
An overwhelming majority (94%) feel safe visiting a .com while only 33% feel comfortable visiting a new gTLD.

About SCORE
Since 1964, SCORE has helped more than 10 million aspiring entrepreneurs. Each year, SCORE provides small business mentoring, workshops and education to more than 375,000 new and growing small businesses. More than 11,000 business experts volunteer as mentors in over 320 chapters serving local communities with entrepreneur education.

About Michael Berkens

Michael Berkens, Esq. is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of TheDomains.com. Michael is also the co-founder of Worldwide Media Inc. which sold around 70K domain to Godaddy.com in December 2015 and now owns around 8K domain names . Michael was also one of the 5 Judges selected for the the Verisign 30th Anniversary .Com contest.

Comments

  1. BrianWick says

    the only problem is there needs to be a middle class economy (small bushiness) that exists or can exist – and that is a shrinking market

  2. John McCormac says

    The problem for .com is that new registration growth velocity is slowing. The last few months have been quite poor. There was a warning over slowing demand earlier this year, I think.

  3. Steven Sikes says

    Positively shocking.Well, no. Curious to know if any one/company has gleaned the data about the myriad startups, that bought the .com extension, after revenues flowed/and/or they raised serious funds. For example, “Box”, which used to be box.net. Or Facebook, which was thefacebook.com, and paid x amount for facebook.com. In the movie version of “The Social Network”, Sean Parker advises the founders to change the name from theFacebook.com to facebook.com. Duh,like right? But that will cost you $200 K. So far, the company had been bootstrapping the build at $1600. They got the additional funds because of the user base, exponential growth, and product. On the Series A raise, they did buy facebook.com

    Buying a .com at 6 or 7 figures, for a startup, is not likely. to happen until the product/company has “serious traction”.

  7. Jeff Schneider says

    Hello MHB,
    With as much authenticity we and I can muster, direct navigation will be allowed to flourish. All good for all involved.

    Gratefully, Jeff Schneider (Contact Group) (Metal Tiger)

  9. Michael Berkens says

    By the way guys although I don’t have any right to call out a typo as god knows no blogger makes more than myself, still on the bottom of the infographic Verisign is spelled wrong in the URL

    Verisinginc.com is what is listed

  10. BrianWick says

    I am reminded of john berryhill’s VeriSign & Verizon being typos of sorts resulting in a potential “veri fun” litigation possibly some day.

  11. Edward C says

    Lol verisign did a study? THIS IS DUMB. smb owners are not educated not familiar with new gtld this study comes way too early

  15. davepanos says

    Agreed. The number missing from their infographic is how many tens of millions of domain registrations that 20% represents!

  17. CompanyNamesIdeas says

    Small business owners know less than domain investors, and the general public barely even knows that .net exists. I think this knowledge flow is overlooked because we expect everyone to know what we know. Look at snap and jet auctions, some really great domains only have 30-40 bidders. Thats worldwide! People don’t understand domains yet, smb is just starting to understand how to use them, and they are going with .com. Short & keyword .COM domains still have a lot of room to explode in value; as do ccTLDs, and gTLDs that make SENSE. My.club, book.club, etc… The internet is still VERY young, and our vision of that gets blurred because most people reading this article have been in the business for so long. I’ve seen a FineBros video recently showing that teens don’t even “get” the new namespace, and it IS confusing. In all, take your “domainer” glasses off and see what is right in front of us; gTLDs have a low demand and are inflated by shoddy numbers that are artificially inflated by giving them away for free.