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Is ".com" domain still important for startup?

4 points by coolboykl ↗ HN
Hi

I am the founder of secQ.me, which we offer personal mobile safety app. Initially, we like to register our domain as "http://secure.me", but as the domain taken, we resolve it to "http://secq.me"

A good friend of mine commented "A large section of the population do not click/trust domains that are not .coms. Every single time we miss out a segment, we lose a potential segment"

Is the statement still valid.. love to hear from u.

James Khoo

8 comments

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anm8tr
I'd like to hear some opinions on this myself. I personally don't think it matters anymore, but every time I get an idea for a product/domain, I get told "No. It should have a dot-com." Hm, really? Should it? I like how Delicious went from De.licio.us to delicious.com when they had the money. Most devs can't afford simple domain names.
nodata
I'd like to see .us used by more companies in the US.
swGooF
If your app targets tech people, then the .com may not be necessary. However, if your app targets a general audience then a .com should be used.

Here is a good test. Find a non-tech person (someone that does not know about your website), and ask him/her to go to your website. Sit him/her in front of a computer, and say, "Please go to secq.me" See if he/she can get to your website without any further directions. Here are some questions you will likely get: "Is there a .com?" "How do you spell that?" If you try this on a few people and nobody has troubles, then great.

GFischer
An interesting point I've observed (and I think it's been validated) is that, for some segments, Google is their domain search... if you tell them, "go to xyz.com", they type xyz.com on Google !
swGooF
That is a good point. I think I have seen that before too. Depending upon your website SEO, that may or may not help.
iKnowKungFoo
http://adage.com/article/news/o-overstock-backs-o-change/230...

Overstock.com changed their primary domain to "o.co" in what I can only assume was an attempt to make people type less.

Customers rarely entered "o.co", instead they entered "o.com" because that's what they expected to domain to be.

Result: tons of cash wasted as Overstock reverted to "Overstock.com".

Get a .com and move on.

coolboykl
Thanks everyone for the suggestion..this is followup question, both I am bad at finding a good domain name for my product and service, since secureme.com is taken, what is the next best name for my product..

Here's a 2 minute intro video about our product.. http://youtu.be/1Hf5hbVxuJw

I am open for suggestion, appreciate your help

Thanks James Khoo secQ.me Founder