Bank Domain Names - An Interview

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1 Is SixthNationalBank.com or SNB.com the more effective Web address? 12 ABa BANK MARKETING DECEMBER 2011

2 Building an Upgraded Internet Domain Name Interview BY Walt Albro Your bank may be happy with its current domain name but that could change. Increasingly, banks are updating their domain names as a result of rebranding, merging or acquiring another bank. Photograph 2011 istock.com/thinkstock.com When bank domain names were first created, the Internet was young, and many banks selected a name simply because it was available and close enough to the bank s real name. With a growing appreciation of the value of an effective domain name, banks are placing more emphasis making the renaming process, when it becomes necessary, as successful as possible. ABA Bank Marketing magazine posed some questions about creating high-quality upgraded domain names to three Website experts: m Michael Bouchard, Web director, at the Pannos Winzeler Marketing. m Amber Farley, director of Interactive Services and Media, Financial Marketing Solutions (FMS). m Christopher Heng, a website developer and founder of the website, thesitewizard.com. DECEMBER 2011 ABa BANK MARKETING 13

3 Our experts did not always agree completely in their responses to every question. The questions and excerpts from our experts answers are printed below: What are the general guidelines for coming up with a strong Bank Internet domain name? Christopher Heng: The domain name you get for the bank should be the name you market the bank under. If the new name of the bank is, say, XYZ Bank, it s probably wise to get, at the very least, xyz.com, xyzbank.com, xyz-bank.com and their.org,.net, and.us versions. Keep the name short, with as few words as possible, and not include things that will lead to ambiguity when people have Reserving a domain name is to type your name into the Web browser. If possible, try to avoid conjunctions the first step in establishing (like and ) and symbols (like & ) in the your brand online. name. Abbreviations are fine, although you should buy the full form of the domain name as well. For example, if the bank is known as NIB, and it actually stands for New Internet Bank, you probably need to buy both the nib.com form as well as newinternetbank.com. Michael Bouchard: Reserving a domain is the first step in establishing your brand online. For that reason, financial institutions should keep their domain name as similar to the bank name as possible. When choosing a domain name there are also many other factors to consider. The name should be both short and memorable something that will make it easier for bank customers and potential customers to remember. It should be easy to pronounce and spell to make it easy for bank employees and brand advocates to direct customers/potential customers online. Additionally, the domain name should not be too similar to competing bank names, if possible. When researching potential domain names, sites such as networksolutions.com allow you to search for and register domain names. This site also brokers deals to transfer ownership of domain names, browse the inventory for a domain name or keyword, and browse the list of expiring domain names to back order. Amber Farley: Choosing the domain of your website and/or microsite is an important decision. It needs to be friendly for users, search engines and for marketing purposes. When deciding what the domain name should be, our team immediately jots down ideas that are most reflective of the brand of the bank or the campaign initiative being implemented. Because the domain is not always clicked, it is important for it to be memorable to the user who might need to type it. For the domain of the main website, we always try to choose something that is reflective of the bank name or how community members refer to the bank. When we have to select a domain name that isn t the exact bank name, we make sure it still represents the bank and/or its message to the community. An example is a client in Virginia named First Bank, a common name. For its domain, we incorporated the bank s tagline to arrive at: What works best:.com or.net? Amber Farley: We would always prefer to use.com over any other top-level domain (unless something better comes along like.bank ) because.com is more intuitive for today s online consumers. Therefore, if the.com version of the domain you want is already taken, don t automatically default to selecting the same domain, but with a different top-level domain. With that said, however, we have some clients where a.net top-level domain works very well for them, so it isn t a definite Don t do. It just isn t our first choice. How far should banks go in reserving alternate domain names? Michael Bouchard: It is important to register all variations of your domain with different top- level domains (TLD) such as.com,.net,.biz, etc. To protect your brand, you may also want to register undesirable domain names, i.e., www. ihatexbank.com. This prevents anyone from creating a negative campaign against you using your brand name. ICANN, the corporation that coordinates all domain names around the world, has announced plans to make Generic Top Level Domains (gtld) available in January 2012 (see sidebar). Banks may soon be able to register your domain as.bank. ICANN has also recently opened up preregistration of the.xxx Top Level Domain. Some banks are looking to protect their brand by registering with.xxx so no one else can. Christopher Heng: Since banks are a potentially huge target for fraud on the Internet, it s probably best to register the domain for all the common domain name suffixes. That is, a basic must is to get the.com,.org,.net forms of the name. If the bank operates in a particular country, it s also important to register that same name with the country-specific domain name suffix as well. For example, for banks operating in the United States, you should register a.us domain name. If your bank s name is multiworded, you may want to also try to anticipate how different people will remember the name, and register all those variations as well. You should also register both the hyphenated variants and variants without any hyphens in between words. That is, if the bank is called Another Internet Bank, register both anotherinternetbank.com as well as another-internet-bank.com (along with the.org,.net,.us, etc, versions). It s best to do this even if you think no one will ever type the hyphenated versions of your name. It s true that the average person thinking of going to your bank is unlikely to type another-internet-bank.com (that is, with the hyphens in the name). However, if you don t register the hyphenated version as well, scammers will. 14 ABa BANK MARKETING DECEMBER 2011

4 And when they send an to your customers from that hyphenated domain asking them to log in, it will look genuine and convincing, since the domain name will have all the words occurring in your company s name. Amber Farley: That can be tricky. It can be quite annoying to manage a ton of domain registrations, but at the same time owning a few specific ones may be advantageous to the bank later down the road. I would always register for any domain around your bank s name. For instance if I purchased www. mybank.com, and etc., were all available, I would recommend buying them as well. Sometimes it is good to purchase a domain that might be accidently used by your consumers so that you can implement a 301 redirect to the domain you want them to access. (A 301 redirect is a specific type of redirect and is considered to be the most efficient and search-engine friendly method to utilize when redirecting Web pages.) How can banks make use of alternate domain names especially for marketing purposes? Christopher Heng: It depends on what you mean by using alternate domain names. If you re thinking of using the variants of your domain name, such as those I mentioned earlier, for promoting specific products or services, I d say that it s not a good idea. It ll only lead to confusion. For example, if your bank s name is Another Internet Bank, and you use anotherinternetbank.com for your main site and another-internet-bank.com for your corporate customers, you re just opening yourself up to confusion. People will arrive at one site, expecting the full range of service, but will only find a limited subset at that corporate site. Even if by alternate domain names you mean that you get a new domain, say anotherinternetbank-specials.com, where you advertise a specific promotion, it s still not a good idea. You may end up giving your customers the impression that any domain name that happens to have the name of your bank in it belongs to you. Scammers can then buy some other variation of your name that you ve overlooked, say, another-internet-bank-promos. com, send spam to everyone asking them to log into that site to verify their account details, and you ll have some customers falling for that since it s now plausible that you own that name too. In my opinion, for banks, it s best to use your main domain for everything. If you really must direct (say) corporate customers to a different part of your site, just use a subdomain. For example, if your bank owns, say, anotherinternetbank.com, redirect corporate customers to corporate.anotherinternetbank.com. That way, your domain name is always the same ( anotherinternetbank.com ), and Internet-savvy users will recognize that the subdomain is just a subsite of your main site. Alternatively, just put your promotions as a subpage on your main site the traditional way, like anotherinternetbank. com/promos/. Redirect all the other domains to your main domain, so that visitors typing those other names will end up at your main site. This is the sort of defensive measure you should take with the other variants of your name. Michael Bouchard: For search engine optimization (SEO) and branding purposes, you should direct as much traffic as possible to your main domain name. However, certain marketing campaigns may benefit from a separate URL. For example: is Easthampton Savings Bank s microsite for its e-gen accounts; they ve chosen to brand this separately from the Bank s main site to target a younger generation. Amber Farley: There are multiple purposes for purchasing alternate domain names. As mentioned above, it can be a good practice to own domains similar to your main one and implement a 301 redirect in case your consumers accidently type in the wrong one. Microsites for specific campaign initiatives can be another example of when alternate domains can be applied. We had a client in Port Angeles, Wash., roll out a Community Dividend Program. The whole initiative was around this concept of doing good feels good. The domain com happened to be available at the time, so we used it for this campaign. First Bank, another client, launched a campaign promoting their new fee-friendly checking account lineup using the domain as a microsite. On that note, when typing domains that are more of a phrase or statement (especially those found in marketing materials), it sometimes works better to use title case, capitalizing the first letter of each word of the domain, so that the user can read it more clearly. If a bank creates a new domain name, what should it do with the old one? Christopher Heng: One thing you should not do is to sell off that old domain name, since you don t know who is going to pick it up. Instead, redirect visitors who go to the old domain to the new one. There are two ways to do this. One way is to put a message on the old site giving information about the bank merger, etc, and link to the new domain. Another way is to do it transparently, that is, set up the old domain so that the Web browser automatically redirects your visitors to the new domain. Then, if you want to put up some information about the merger or name change, you can do it via a news snippet on your main page that links to a more complete article on your website. Amber Farley: If the existing bank domain is reflected of the bank s name or brand in anyway, I would recommend holding on to it. It is inexpensive to maintain a URL typically around $10/year. If you get rid of it, someone else might snatch it up. Once the new domain is established, I would implement A domain name needs to be friendly for users, search engines and for marketing purposes. DECEMBER 2011 ABa BANK MARKETING 15

5 a 301 redirect so that no disruption occurs for customers who have the old URL bookmarked and search engines who have the old URL included in their index. What impact do you think the proposed new.bank domain name will have on the financial services industry if it comes about? Michael Bouchard: The biggest potential benefit to a.bank top-level domain (TLD) is security. With the prevalence of phishing and spoofing scams targeted towards financial services, the industry is in need of a way to protect consumers. The idea is that only well vetted institutions would be able to obtain a.bank TLD, adding a new layer of trust for that address. However, there are still ways for scammers to trick consumers by obscuring a domain name, so consumer education will continue to be important. The adoption of.bank may be slow initially as larger institutions pave the way and the industry waits to see what happens. Amber Farley: If this actually gets implemented there will have to be procedures in place that make sure banks applying for a.bank domain are indeed a bank. I would hope that a.bank domain would automatically be considered to be more secure than a.com domain and therefore will protect the bank s interests and security of its customers. If this can be enforced,.bank may become quite popular with consumers.... I could be wrong of course, but I think.com is extremely intuitive for users and therefore users might be slow to adopt these new top-level domains into their daily online behavior. Christopher Heng: In the short term, like all new domain name suffixes, they will add to your costs, without bringing in any new benefit. You will probably have to buy up the.bank suffix when it comes out, in addition to whatever else you have. In the long term, who knows? It depends on how the registrars enforce the buying of.bank domains. If they can successfully ensure that only real banks own those extensions, perhaps we can reduce the number of scammers pretending to be banks. Is there a.bank Domain Name in Your Future? By Doug Johnson Last June, after three years of discussions, ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, announced its intention to open up an application window for new Internet domains starting January of ICANN expects somewhere between 500 and 1,000 such applications. ABA fully expects applications for financial domains such as.bank will be filed. We are aware of at least five separate initiatives to potentially apply for the domain. It is vitally important that a.bank domain not fall into the hands of those that would operate it insecurely or charge banks exorbitant registration fees to protect their intellectual property. To protect banking interests, over the last three years ABA has worked with the Financial Services Roundtable to stop or slow the process as it relates to financial domains. Our advocacy has resulted in ICANN acknowledging that financial domains should have higher levels of security than domains generally. Government agencies, including our FFIEC agencies, also now have a more effective avenue to express their concerns about financial domain applications. To guide ABA actions and advocacy on this critical issue, former Chairman Stephen P. Wilson also established a Chairman s Dot-Bank Task Force, composed of bankers from both small and large institutions. We are playing defense based on task force and member perceptions of little immediate demand for a.bank site. At the same time, a recent member survey indicated two-thirds of the bankers responding would revamp their marketing efforts to include a.bank address. In addition, at the recommendation of the task force, the ABA board also recently approved the establishment of an ABA subsidiary for-profit corporation within the Corporation for American Banking with authority to file an application to ICANN for one or more financial top level Internet domains and to take other necessary actions related to creating and operating such domains. What does this mean for a bank? It could be a threat to banks if the ability to give out.bank domain names is approved for parties other than a broad-based community of financial institutions and financial trade associations dedicated to protecting the financial community s interests. ABA s decision to possibly file an application for one or more financial top level Internet domains positions ABA to set up a structure that allows only chartered banks and other legitimate financial parties, as determined by us, to operate within the domain. Even if ABA decides not to file an application, both the association and government now have better tools to protect against applications that do not restrict a financial domain to legitimate parties or fail to demonstrate that the appropriate security measures will be in place. In either case, bank and other financial interests are being protected in ways they would not have been, had ABA not engaged in the domain name process. If you would like to be kept informed on.bank issues, please send an to ehunter@aba.com. You will receive updates on the status of ABA s.bank activities. Doug Johnson is vice president of Risk Management Policy for ABA, Washington, D.C. 16 ABa BANK MARKETING DECEMBER 2011

6 It also depends on whether there is a critical mass of banks willing to buy the domain and use it. If many banks move their websites to the.bank domain, then everyone will probably have to do the same, otherwise the average Internet user will be suspicious of any bank websites that use a.com domain. (They will wonder if it is a legitimate site.) On the other hand, if nobody bothers to move, then the status quo will prevail, and.bank will become another suffix like many of the new suffixes (e.g.,.info,.biz ) that have been released over the years. If.bank comes about, how should banks handle the conversion? For example, what should banks be thinking of doing with their old.com domain names? Amber Farley: If a.bank domain is purchased by a bank, I would recommend that bank gauge its communities and determine how its current customer would feel about switching to a.bank domain. It is more important than ever for community banks to really listen to the voice of the consumer: What is important to your customers? What causes resistance and frustration? How does the.bank domain fall into the mix? If your customers and community would be willing to adapt to this new top level domain world it would be advantageous for the bank to purchase its.bank domain and then when it is in use, implement a 301 redirect form the old URL to the new. Christopher Heng: If you re moving all your Internet operations to a.bank domain from a.com one, make sure everything is moved to that new address. That way, all your users know that any time they need to access your services on the Internet, it s invariably through that domain, and no other. This is particularly important when moving to a.bank domain since the whole point of having a.bank suffix is that only real banks can get such a domain. If your Internet operations are spread out with some on a.bank domain and others on a.com, you re nullifying the usefulness of having such a.bank. With everything concentrated on one domain, any phishing (i.e., scam ) that tries to direct users to a different site will be more easily recognized as fraudulent. n Michael Bouchard can be reached at mike@pannoswinzeler.com. Amber Farley can be reached at amber@ fms4banks.com. Christopher Heng can be reached at Reach this advertiser through DECEMBER 2011 ABa BANK MARKETING 17