Web sites can vary in size. In some cases, you may want to take a Web visitor deep within a Web site without having them click multiple times to navigate through content they don’t need to see. You can do this 2 ways – 1 way is to publish a long URL that is to the exact location of the content, the other is to use a domain name that redirects to that long URL.
This came to mind recently when I saw a commercial for Shell promoting a concept called “Real Energy” where at the end they displayed the following URL verbatim:
The announcer read the URL as follows:
“Shell dot com US real energy”
Note the announcer did not read the slashes! Where this is not incorrect, wouldn’t it have been more effective if it was displayed and read as shellrealenergy.com? Note that as of this writing, this is an unregistered domain name.
If this domain name was used, it could have server multiple purposes. On a quick Web search, there are other versions of this commercial for other countries. By going to one domain name, it could have first loaded a Web page that could have detected where the Web visitor was coming from and automatically directed them to the appropriate country’s Web page? Or it could have displayed a map or list of countries for the Web visitor to select from.
One address, multiple destinations, all thanks to a domain name. I wonder if Shell will go out and register the domain name now?
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I agree. If you’re Shell, spend the money to register a dedicated domain for your campaign! Also, ccTLD’s exist for a reason. ;)
I want to know if the cable TV ads with domains like example.com/123456 actually get enough people to type the tracking number to make the more complex URL’s worthwhile.
Good question on the TV ad URLs… my guess is they get the domain name and not the path.
mp/m
I suspect that you’re right, Mike. Whenever a URL is broadcasted my way, I only remember the domain because I figure I can always navigate my way to whatever page was of interest to me…
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The Hot Iron strives to present unique content and point-of-view on business, technology and other topics by Mike Maddaloni, a technology strategist based in Appleton, Wisconsin.
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