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.
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
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.
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”.
the use of the word shocking was meant to be used in a sarcastic manner
Schoking: My mother’s backed study shows I’m great.
In other shocking news: XYZ has a growth rate of 10,000%
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)
Rubens
Thank god someone got it
))::
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
I see Verisinginc to be similar to VerySinking 🙂
I am reminded of john berryhill’s VeriSign & Verizon being typos of sorts resulting in a potential “veri fun” litigation possibly some day.
Lol verisign did a study? THIS IS DUMB. smb owners are not educated not familiar with new gtld this study comes way too early
i see it as a new talent show
Verisign Sings
Very clear inforgraph. On-demand postman says its too early
20% is a good start giving away that market share Verisign.
Agreed. The number missing from their infographic is how many tens of millions of domain registrations that 20% represents!
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what is really shocking and unbelievable is that 20% of them prefer a new gTLD instead of a .com !
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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.
🙂
Why Do Americans Not Understand Sarcasm / Irony ?
https://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20060809055313AA3PzrZ