Whenever I see a .com address printed on the side of a truck etc, I always think what a waste!
I can't understand why a business that operates solely in Australia would register a .com. I suspect the reason might be because they think it's cheaper (they see US$8 p.a. rather than A$140/2 years (MIT)) or they don't give it enough thought.
So, I think a great initiative would be for auDA to spend a bit of money and get them to at least register the com.au equivalent. And also try to educate potantial registrants of the value of a .au domain.
1) They should commission some research as to what an Australian would most naturally assume an Aussie website's extension should be.
This could be as simple as surveying 1,000 people and asking them the question. "If a company's business name is 'John Smith Plumbing', what would you expect their website address to be?"
All of us here know that 90%+ of people would probably say johnsmithplumbing.com.au
That research would be a powerful selling tool for the .AU web space.
2) Secondly, they acquire a list of all the Australian based websites that use .com as their extension. Run a script to check whether the .au equivalent is available and then, if so, email them all to let them know and include a copy of the research above.
(Gathering email addresses using WHOIS would be a manual process of course but as it's a relevant business proposition, it's certainly not spamming)
Also let them know that the average retail price of .au domains is now around A$35 for 2 years.
What do you think?
I can't understand why a business that operates solely in Australia would register a .com. I suspect the reason might be because they think it's cheaper (they see US$8 p.a. rather than A$140/2 years (MIT)) or they don't give it enough thought.
So, I think a great initiative would be for auDA to spend a bit of money and get them to at least register the com.au equivalent. And also try to educate potantial registrants of the value of a .au domain.
1) They should commission some research as to what an Australian would most naturally assume an Aussie website's extension should be.
This could be as simple as surveying 1,000 people and asking them the question. "If a company's business name is 'John Smith Plumbing', what would you expect their website address to be?"
All of us here know that 90%+ of people would probably say johnsmithplumbing.com.au
That research would be a powerful selling tool for the .AU web space.
2) Secondly, they acquire a list of all the Australian based websites that use .com as their extension. Run a script to check whether the .au equivalent is available and then, if so, email them all to let them know and include a copy of the research above.
(Gathering email addresses using WHOIS would be a manual process of course but as it's a relevant business proposition, it's certainly not spamming)
Also let them know that the average retail price of .au domains is now around A$35 for 2 years.
What do you think?