Which to promote, my .ie or .com?

cormie

I'm just about to launch my new business, VanTasks, which is currently located at www.vantasks.com and will soon be accessable through www.vantasks.ie too. I'm going to be sending business cards to print on Monday and I'm still not sure if I should choose VanTasks.com or VanTasks.ie as the main name.

It's not really a matter of choosing for example .ie so I'll get better results from Irish google users, because since I'll have the .ie anyway, that will be taken care of.

So it's a matter of which the Irish public will react better to when they see it on a business card, a leaflet, on the side of the van or hear of through word of mouth. My target customers will not necessarily know much about computers or the internet but I want them to know they can find more info by visiting a website, which is in the name.

I think there are a lot more popular "internet" sites associated with .com addresses than .ie. Google.com, youtube.com, ebay.com would be known to most people in Ireland. People know what a .com is and associate it with the internet. I'm not sure if a .ie is associated with the internet in the same way a .com is, i.e. do people know what a .ie is?

I'll also just be using the one branding, either have my logo say VanTasks.com or VanTasks.ie, so www.vantasks.com could have the .ie logo, or www.vantasks.ie could have the .com logo.

It's basically down to whether Joe public will know that he can get more information by simply visiting the business name, online.

Would appreciate if you could cast a vote and voice any opinions on the matter. Links to any studies/surveys/results would really help too as well as personal experiences:)

enda1

You may want to put your van information into metric units. Imperial is gone by the way of the thin american.

cormie

Hehe, thanks for the input, I'll try change that soon:)

So 2 votes for .ie so far and none for .com. Hmm..

louie

I will go with .ie o this one.

cormie

I do prefer the idea of having it .ie myself, but does anyone have any evidence that .ie would be less recognisable and associated with an internet address than a .com? That's the only thing that's holding me back from just going flat out .ie.

mneylon

If you're targettin the Irish market then the .ie is the way to go

cormie

Hmm, I wonder who picked .com and why

I know .ie definitely seems the better choice and I'm sure it is for an Irish company, but would this mean I could lose potential customers that I would have got if it was a .com I wonder.

louie

can you not use both of them to give u piece of mind?
you can have .ie as main domain and .com as domain pointer.

cormie

That's what I will be doing yeah

But the decision was between using .com or .ie as the main name, on business cards, van branding and everything else and just using the other one as a pointer.

Goodshape

.ie

It says "We're Irish" in just two letters.

cormie

Decided to go with .com, thanks anyway.

Only messing:D .ie it is:)

phil

The decision is a branding issue.

.ie says Irish, .com says international. Which you want to pretend to be is up to you.

RedCardinal

phil wrote:

The decision is a branding issue.

.ie says Irish, .com says international. Which you want to pretend to be is up to you.

From my POV there is also a very definite issue with how search engines will interpret your website. Controlling both .ie and .com domains is a good idea, but simply plonking the same content on both domains is a very dangerous tactic. If both sites go live simultaneously then you will end up with a race condition - whichever is found first will be indexed and the other will be filtered from the results. If the .com is indexed you will need to be hosted in Eire to show in Irish filtered searches.

My advice - go with .ie, create a 301 redirect from the .com to the .ie so that you catch type-in traffic. But put .ie live first and get it indexed

I agree with all other marketing advice - if Ireland is your target then you will derive a better trust profile with your market by hosting on .ie IMHO.

cormie

Thanks for that. I will suggest that to my designer about the 301 etc:)

Hopefully it's possible though as the .com has been live for about 2 months and the .ie, about 2 days:o

At the moment, the .com isn't hosted in Ireland, should I keep it this way and host the .ie in Ireland I wonder?

phil

There's no need to host the .ie in Ireland. Google will index .ie sites as being Irish. The problem is with the .com. If it's hosted outside recognised Irish IP space, Google isn't going to know it's an Irish site.

Phil.

cormie

I think blacknight said something about hosting in Ireland helping Although I think his/her exact words were something like "change hosting or at least get a .ie domain" if I wanted to show up as pages from Ireland etc.

mneylon

cormie wrote:

I think blacknight said something about hosting in Ireland helping Although I think his/her exact words were something like "change hosting or at least get a .ie domain" if I wanted to show up as pages from Ireland etc.

I'm a guy!!

There are a lot of reasons why hosting in Ireland would benefit you...

Apart from anything else it's a hell of a lot easier to get technical support during office hours if your site is hosted in the same timezone. While you may be able to get support from US operations during Irish office hours you'll generally find that the more senior technical staff work sane hours and won't be on the night shift that much...

phil

1. If you're running off a .ie, you don't need to host this in Ireland for Google to index the site as Irish.

2. If you're running from the .com domain name, you need to host this in Ireland (on Irish IP space is more correct. hosting on a johnny-fly-by-night hosting company who pretends to be Irish but is reselling a US product won't get you much)