Domains of Branding

How much could your brand suffer if it didn’t own the domain name that reads its name? Obviously the number is out of reach. What brought my attention back to this issue is by dialing Showtime.com. It’s a domain name with an automated landing page at Network Solutions. I’ve never dialed Showtime, I’ve always been taken by a link to apparently Showtime Arabia instead.

A quick look at the whois records of the domain name, it reads that Showtime Tours Incorporated, a company in GB owns the domain name since 2003. But then again this website is down.

Now the interesting part, the website showtime.com has a ranking of 157,224 on Alexa and according to Compete Rank it has 64,427 U.S visitors a month. Now you might think 64K ain’t that a big deal? Okay, how about 64K showtime seekers/followers who have to either click/search/type elsewhere and get frustrated till they find the domain name that actually takes them to their beloved cable network Showtime?

Now I wouldn’t say Showtime couldn’t effort the price, that’d be underestimating their size, uninformed marketers? That wouldn’t be true either, in all the cases, that’s a miss!

Tweet This Post

Dot AE domain names

In the last 13 months, we had the chance to work on 18 “.ae” domains, in which we registered six of them. At dots & lines, we sometimes take the liberty of deciding domain names, and 90% of the time we’re the hosting mediators too. So that involves us in selecting the best suiting hosting and sometimes the e-mail plans for our clients. With 18 domain names, only 3 domain names out of the 12 worked seamlessly when DNS records needed to change and those were the ones for large corporates who had an Etisalat account-manager in their disposal.

The Experience

While reviewing our work from last year, the “.ae” records kept us skeptical on going with the UAE choice over and over again since “.ae” domains can not be modified by third-parties who are not associated with the person/company who registered the domains.

This is a typical drill, a client has a domain name registered by either a direct domain name registration or a domain name that came free of charge while purchasing a Business-One service from Etisalat. Client needs a website, so we get involved, next, we need to host their website thus, need to update some DNS records which can only be changed by the client or a person who registered it. By either e-mail or fax, and only from the same addresses filled in the registration fields. Our roll has always been preparing the letters sending to clients, and then letting them know who to send the letters to, and god forbid something goes wrong, it has to happen again, that is two more days of delay and that’s if the request was taken care of immediately.

Unlike .com/.net/.org that could be all modified in an online app, “.ae” DNS, A-Records should be changed by either sending e-mails or faxes to UAE-NIC in which lately had been a 10 days work.

Changes that affected UAE NIC

I can’t recall having any issues with “.ae” domains before du was formed and before the formation of TRA which took UAE NIC away from Etisalat’s control and made it into an independent body, causing UAE NIC slowness caused by maybe understaffed team or just a restructuring procedure that is complicating the communications with UAE NIC.

My findings are, NIC is really understaffed, and to be honest, while the NIC clients work from 9 to 6, I can’t understand how NIC gets to wrok from 8 to 3? Hoping for a quick change, soon, “.ae” has finally become popular for UAE businesses and it’s not the right time for a huge mess-up, hope someone would hear us out.

The coming soon story

While seeing the coming soon banners on UAENIC homepage for online-services gives us hope every time we search or check for a domain name availablility it is getting a little out of hand as how clients demand do not match the quality of UAENIC time frames and services.

Please share if you’ve been in our shoes too, it’s important, we can make a change, let us hear you out.

Tweet This Post