On October 3, I blogged about the United States Postal Service’s campaign to make consumers aware of threats posed by scammers. In that post, I said that the campaign was great, but “the USPS should never have used a .org domain name where the .com is taken. If they needed to have that specific .org, they should have bought the .com for whatever it cost.” Well, as it turns out, the USPS did buy FakeChecks.com the following day. According to the Whois History service, they utilized the services of Sedo on 10/4, and it now shows the USPS as current owners.

Congratulations to the USPS for “getting it” both figuratively, and for litterally getting it, by purchasing the name they needed much more than the previous owner. Now all they need to do is forward that URL to FakeChecks.org, as the .com currently shows a “Welcome to Your New Virtual Private Server!” message.

Yahoo recently announced the launch of Kickstart, a new social networking site.  I wanted to check it out, so I navigated to Kickstart.com, and I found a Network Solutions “Coming Soon” landing page.  Curious, I did a Whois search for Kickstart.com, and I learned that Yahoo doesn’t own this name.  It’s owned by a company called Toe-Food Chocolates, and has been owned by them since at least February of 2003.  Yahoo’s Kickstart website is actually located at kickstart.yahoo.com.  

Although this is in line with Yahoo’s other brands (http://finance.yahoo.com as an example), I think this is very shortsighted.  Perhaps Yahoo is looking in to acquiring this great generic name, but wouldn’t it have made more sense to acquire the name before launching the brand?  I can’t even imagine the amount of traffic that has been lost in the last few days. It would probably be better if Kickstart.com was a developed website so visitors would know to look elsewhere. Because of the landing page that is currently on the website, visitors may just assume the site hasn’t launched yet.

There have been plenty of times where I walked into a bar and asked for a beer that the bar doesn’t stock.  Of course, I ordered a different beer, but for the sake of this post, let’s say that I really wanted a particular kind of beer, and when the bartender informed me that he doesn’t have it, I walked out and went to the bar down the street.

If this scenario happens just once or twice, the lost business probably won’t cost the bar much money.  However, if this is a recurring situation, it would be in the bar’s best interest to begin carrying the requested beers to satisfy the needs of its customers and not miss out on a revenue generating idea.

Likewise on a website, the owner should do his best to provide content that is of interest to his visitors.  Oftentimes if a visitor doesn’t find what he needs, he will use the search bar to locate it.  A savvy website/domain owner will use the search log information to see what his visitors are looking for but can’t seem to find.  He will then make adjustments to his product/content selection to ensure the needs of his visitors are met.  

The lost revenue from one or two visitors may be small, but if you can learn about what your customers want and offer it to them, you are sure to satiate your visitors’ thirst for information.

(Special thanks to Jonathan for reminding me about how important the search bar can be to a domain owner!)