Jan 5, 2009

Multiple names can boost e-commerce traffic and salesBy D. Gail FleenorStores.org

Building a successful online business entails many factors, not the least of which is ensuring that current and potential customers can find you.

Retailers that possess only one domain name – a website bearing the company name – may be missing out on potential sales from online customers who misspell the company name or use a search engine to seek a retailer by category or geography. Conversely, purchasing domains with names that attract the kinds of customers a company covets significantly boosts opportunities for website visits – and sales.

With a background in technology, Keith Riewe is not your typical small business owner. After purchasing 34-year-old Bice’s Florist and closing all but one of its stores, Riewe managed to increase sales 38 percent or more than $1.5 million.

Realizing that customers “don’t walk into flower shops anymore,” Riewe focused on developing a strong web presence with multiple domain names. With reduced labor and operation costs and reduced in-store product expenses, Riewe achieved the sweet smell of success.

Riewe spent 12 years as a computer consultant to businesses such as Frito-Lay, but always wanted to own his own business. Bice’s, he says, “was a top 100 [seller] with FTD and was well-known in the Fort Worth, Texas, area.” The business was far behind technologically, however, with only three PCs and a website that was informational only.

The previous owners had secured the domain name “Bicesflorist” but not “Bices.com,” Riewe says. “When people in the Dallas/Fort Worth area think of our shop, they think of it just as Bice’s, so I had to get that domain name.”

Problem was, it was owned by a German man who didn’t want to discuss a sale, so Riewe contacted Sedo. The company undertook negotiations between Riewe and the seller: “It was relatively simple,” Riewe says. “It took six weeks to acquire the domain.”

Sedo is a German company that bills itself as a global marketplace for buying and selling domain names and websites. “Domains are your piece of online real estate,” says COO Jeremiah Johnston, and with 800,000 users in 120 countries, “we are the eBay for domain names.”

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