Structure of a Domain Portfolio 

After registering one main and various additional domains, companies have in their possession a number of various domains which can be collected into one domain portfolio. This collection of domains requires maintenance because domains are added or, after expiration, released or sold. This portfolio is comparable with a stock portfolio which adds good stocks or funds and dumps and sells securities which perform poorly or are stagnating. In the ideal case, the domain portfolio covers all of the advertised products as well as alternative spellings and combinations of the company’s own name. If there is a gap due to the omission of a possible domain name in the portfolio, there is a threat of defection losses, which means a loss in visitor flows when the visitors are redirected to a website other than the one intended by the enterprise. In the worst case, the visitor is directed to a domain belonging to the competition.

To avoid possible defection losses in the domain portfolio, domain names with hyphens should be registered because the lack of an additional domain with or without hyphens means that the redirection of  users to the main domain which is written correctly is not available. The entry of the domain mercedesbenz.de must be noted and the visitor redirected to the correct spelling of the company’s name, mercedes-benz.de.

In addition, losses can occur due to the lack of top-level domains (TLD) in the portfolio. When registering a domain with international character and the extension “.com”, the domain name should also be registered under the country-specific top-level domains to restrict losses resulting from direct entries of addresses with the top-level domain “.de”. If the company’s product targets both international and domestic customers, the registration of the additional domain is mandatory because users can enter the domain name directly with the ending for the appropriate country. Using only exotic top-level domains such as “.tv” (Tuvalu) or “.ws” (Samoa) must be avoided because these extensions are unfamiliar in Germany and are more likely to awaken the consumers’ mistrust. The defection loss is lower for a company which is active on a national scale, but the domain level should be registered in advance under other top-level domains so that a future international orientation is covered.