Dragons disapprove of Yogiyo's domain choice

Back Posted on 19 Aug 2015

Did you see Yogiyo on Sunday's episode of Dragon's den?

Ben and Sue Youn pitched for investment in their Korean inspired cooking and dipping sauce business.

All was well until their domain name was uncovered:

yogiyo.uk.com

The ensuing questions revealed that although yogiyo.com was the founder's preferred domain they were unable to secure it.

Not because it wasn't available but because they didn't act quickly enough - someone else grabbed it while they were on holiday.

So what's wrong with yogiyo.uk.com?

Technically nothing, .uk.com is meant to indicate a business from the UK but:

• It's a little clunky
• Premium brands rarely use .uk.com
• Potential to confuse customers, many people expect domains to end in only .com or .co.uk
• Domains using uncommon extensions often indicate a poor quality website and therefore untrusted

Could they not just demand yogiyo.com be handed over?

Not easily. During the show we learned that like the French term Garçon, in Korea yogiyo is used to call the waiting staff in a restaurant.

I doubt a small business could claim ownership over a commonly used word.

Potentially yogigo.com could be purchased from the current owner however that would take time and may cost far more than it cost to register the domain (insurance.com sold for $35.6 million in 2010).

Brand protection

This also raises the question of brand protection. If anyone can register a domain what's to stop variants like yogi-yo.com being registered by other potentially mallicious or competing companies?

The answer, nothing.  The only real thing you can do is register the variant first but does that make sense when there are hundreds of extensions?

Not really, the cost of renewal over the life of the domains could be significant. So the best approach is to register a couple of strategic variations to cover the main bases.

These shold be parked (either don't respond or display a link to the main domain) or redirected correctly (a 301 http response is the technical term) to the main domain.  Do not set up an alias to the main domain, the same website content should not show for variant domains.

Is anyone really affected by rogue domain registrations?

Rarely but the pain of dealing with an issue is far less than a bit of planning up front.

In the past year I've seen the reputation of a long standing British company heavily tarnished by a scam website. A copycat domain was registered with a dash separating the company name eg. my-company.co.uk instead of the genuine mycompany.co.uk. Unsuspecting customers were tricked into paying thousands of pounds direct to scammers for products that did not exist.

In another incident the same tactic was used to register a domain only one character different to the legitimate website. It was used to attract job applications from overseas then ask applicants to pay travel and visa fees to secure an interview.

But did Ben and Sue Youn secure an investor?

A deal was secured with Peter Jones. With his help Ben and Sue Youn are preparing to launch Yogiyo’s Korean cooking range nationwide this autumn.

What domain are they using

You can find Yogiyo's slick new website at yogiyo.co

A few bonus tips

 How does domain registration work

• First come first served
• Typically registered for 2 years at a time but can be 2-10 depending on the extension
• Expect trademarks to be defended eg. if you registered iphonerepair.co.uk you could expect a letter from Apple's legal department
• You get first refusal to renew as the domain expires. Domains that are not renewed beome available for others to register shortly after expiry, usually around 75 days
• It is common for expired domains to be snapped up by prospectors hoping to sell the domain on for more than they paid or take advantage of any traffic by runing adverts

Tips for choosing a domain

• Keep it short
• Easy to spell
• Common extension (unless target market is tech savvy eg. Adobe's Text Editor brackets.io or the javascript library script.aculo.us)

Multiple domains

Generally the only reason to register multiple domains is brand protetion ie. to prevent others registering them.

There is generally no advantage to having multiple domains active and could confuse customers or dilute the value of your main domain if it has several aliases.

What if someone has a domain I believe is rightfully mine

If the domain is a .uk Nominet, the UK's domain name registry operate a Dispute Resolution Service. This can be used say if a the person who controls the domain on your behalf will not hand it over or if someone has registered a trademarked term.

There is a small administration fee and each time I've used this service the desired result has been reached quicklyl

Similar services exist for other domain registries such as Tucows who handle domains such as .com.

Example rebranding

Sometimes you may need to rebrand by registering a better domain.  feedthebot.com recently rebranded as varvy.com. Patrick Sexton wrote an in depth article noting why it was time to change his domain including loads of bite size tips about selecting or changing your domain

Other resources

You can see domains due to expire soon at:
https://www.123-reg.co.uk/domain-names/expiring-domains.shtml