Domain names
The makeup of a domain name
The letters after the dot signify the top level domain ("TLD") for a name. TLDs were originally limited to .com for business, .net for Internet business, .ac for academia, .gov for government, and a small number of others. It soon became apparent that each country needed its own individual identity. Now every country in the world has its own TLD.
All TLDs are allocated, approved, and registered by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). More recently ICANN has authorised many more names which are not country specific, such as ".biz", ".info", ".name", ".aero".
Most countries have their own central registrar for their particular TLD. In some cases the registrar is privately owned. In most it is a governmental organisation. The rules as to who and how a new domain name must be registered vary greatly from one country to another. In some it is cheap and easy, in others it is expensive, even for locals. In many countries a number of sub registrars are appointed. These are private "for profit" organisations who simply act as wholesalers to the general public. These arrangements are such that it is very easy to register a ". com" or a ".co.uk" for your UK business. It is far more difficult to register a ".fr". Do you need a .com?
Because .com (commerce) was the first TLD to be widely used in the business community, it is generally regarded as more "respectable" than many of the newer TLDs. Furthermore; there is a great marketing advantage in using the most widely accepted TLDs. If you wish to make your web site as accessible as possible to your prospective customers, then the name should be memorable. People tend to try a ".com" first if they are in doubt.
If you trade mainly or exclusively in the UK you will not lose out by the TLD ".co.uk". When you want to test out ideas for your domain name, you can do so easily from most web sites of domain name sub registrars. Most will provide you with a short list of possible TLDs of the name you test. What about the rest of my name?
People agonise for weeks as to the most appropriate domain name for their ecommerce aspirations. There are a number of considerations. Most of them relate ultimately to marketing. Your web address is important and it says a great deal about you. Careful consideration should be given to the image you wish to convey through your web site. If you have established goodwill in your name, then your web site should reflect that name. Look at the web sites of the big banks and car companies to illustrate this point. If alternatively you are looking to build up an ecommerce business alongside an existing business, or as a completely new venture, then you have far more scope to choose a name that is memorable, and around which you can build a brand. "Net Lawman" is just such a name. Indeed if your business is comparatively small, it may still be best to choose a domain name that is memorable than to stick with "jroberts-plumbers". Note that the actual choice of name, layout, spelling, etc, is critically important to maximise your appeal to search engines - the way most goods and services are found on the Internet. Someone has registered my name!
There may be several "angelarobinson-locksmith" in the UK alone. Worldwide there may be hundreds. Clearly only one of them can use ".com". That is the main reason why so many Internet names are descriptive or catchy rather than traditional. Since you can now register up to 63 characters in a domain name, the scope for using phrases rather than words is enormous. Your only limit is your imagination. Problems arise however if you want to register a name that is too like someone else's name. Unfortunately international litigation as to the rights in a name is very rarely worth the expense. You should therefore carefully explore similar names to the one you propose, to make sure it is not used by a large organisation elsewhere, with the financial muscle to bankrupt you if they believe you have stepped out of line. Note that your use of a different TLD is not sufficient to defend a "passing off" action if you are selling a product in the same industry. Remember too that laws in other countries may be different from the UK, so that in total you may be even more limited as to what you can do. Big Company plc may have registered bigcompany.com, but not bigcompany.biz. That is likely to be acceptable if you are in a different industry with an entirely different customer base. The very fact however that you have registered bigcompany.biz does not automatically entitle you to trade under that name. Indeed, if "Bigcompany" is a registered trademark, you may not trade in the same categories using that name.
Remember that the Business Names Act 1985 applies to domain names too.
Your web site - white elephant or golden goose?
Why have a web site?
There are three alternative ecommerce web site functions:
- To operate an ecommerce business - like www.Yahoo.com or www.NetLawman.co.uk;
- As an advertising and marketing tool for a non-Internet business;
- As an additional sales and marketing outlet for a non-Internet business.
To operate an ecommerce business
Clearly you cannot operate an ecommerce business without a web site! Principal matters for consideration are:
Research the market
The Internet provides access to a billion people but they won't all want to buy your product or service. If you search on Google under "business advice", the blue line will show that you are looking at results 1 - 10 of about 3,350,000. Although not all commercial sites, they do they do represent
gigantic competition in making your site visible to Internet surfers. Find a niche
Do not be mesmerised by dreams of profit. What really matters for the first 12 months is cash flow. You would not be in ecommerce if you did not expect to make profit, but if you do not have the cash to see you through a worst-case scenario then best go back to your day job. Full or part time
Just about everyone will confirm that your business is more likely to succeed if you are operating it full time. However, many Internet businesses can be started with a tiny amount of capital. It is much easier to operate an Internet business part time than a non-Internet business. That is because the time spent can be chosen by you very precisely to fit in with the rest of your life. Only sedentary non-Internet businesses like creative writing can match this convenience. Operating a business part time will enable you to test market the concept without stress, worry, and risk. Learn how it works
Learn what is involved in creating a web site. You do not need any of the required skills personally, but you do need to know enough about each to know how they fit together, and to be able to recognise whether another person has the appropriate skill in sufficient depth. The skills come in four categories:
- graphic design,
- coding,
- html and
- search engine placement
Graphic design is creative art, therefore it rarely mixes with technical skills like html. Unfortunately however, graphics produced by someone who has no knowledge of web design will be too expensive and hopelessly impractical, with too much weight to download. Keep the site simple at first, clean and uncluttered, with white background to the text. Try to find an html expert with some ideas on graphics. Alternatively, get your graphics and html people to sit down together, with you as referee, to decide what you really want. Your html person may also be your coder. There are many variations of higher-level skills required. Just make sure that somebody somewhere will accept the responsibility of putting the whole thing together, publishing it, and generally making it work. An advertising and marketing tool for a non-Internet business.
Many web sites exist simply to promote a business which is not “ecommerce enabled”. They tend to fall down in one of two quite different ways. Either the entrance page is so full of brilliant graphics that the visitor is so taken in by the graphics that he fails to notice the virtues of the service or product being sold. The alternative is a site, which is unexpectedly boring for the quality or level of merchandise or service being offered. An additional sales and marketing outlet for a non-Internet business
Remember that every page, every word, every graphic, every colour, every keyword on your site must contribute to the marketing effort.
Thoroughly assess other sites that you know are successful as e-commerce sites. Many of the most lavish are not successful at all. Look primarily at Internet businesses that are known to be successful in marketing terms (even if they do not make a penny in profit).
Remember that a niche business is the most likely to make a success of ecommerce. People do not surf for a shopping experience in the same way that they visit a neighbourhood shopping centre. On the Internet, people search for a particular product. Decide which products from your range you want to promote and sell them hard. It follows that you are better with several linked web sites, than just one selling a mix of variations.
The single most successful marketing policy is to sell a popular and easily understood product or service at a very competitive price. As you sell you assemble a growing customer list. You can now approach those customers (tactfully and not too frequently) with offers of other products complimentary to their first purchase, and upon which you make real profit. Your ecommerce contract - buying or selling - when are you bound to a contract?
Every trader knows that there is no contract without an offer, an acceptance, and agreement by both parties as to the terms of the offer and acceptance. The position is reasonably clear when you take goods to a cashier in a shop and pay for them. In ecommerce, issues may be clouded by representations (or misrepresentations), advertisements, offers, and unusual payment systems.
As you will know, if you buy goods or services with a credit card from a UK issuer, (and many other countries), the card issuer is responsible to you as if he had sold you the goods or services. Because credit card operators are effectively big banks, who know nothing whatever about the goods or services which are the subject of a transaction, they are at a disadvantage in any claim for a refund.
As you would expect however, the banks do not simply lie down and accept the loss. The bank has an agreement with the original seller of the goods. Quite apart from the considerable complexities of obtaining an ecommerce "merchant service account" with a bank, the bank covers itself fully by simply charging back to its customer, you, the amount of any refund. It will also make a charge against you for doing so! Even if the buyer is not in the UK, you may well find that your merchant service provider has given a refund without reference to you. You lose the money, and you may well find it impossible to obtain the return of the goods. A contract for services may have already been fulfilled. It is essential that you build into your ecommerce business model the potential for such problems.
There are exceptions to these harsh rules, but the purpose of these notes is to make you aware of the importance of identifying the point at which a contract is made in an Internet transaction:
Many web pages are unclear whether they constitute "an invitation to treat", that is to say a pre-contract enticement, or whether alternatively the web page makes a formal offer. If you are an ecommerce trader it may be very important for you to know whether or not you are bound by a contract. If you are a buyer you have no choice but to either guess the position yourself, or seek advice, or make clear by your next action that you do or do not consider yourself bound.
In the local supermarket the acceptance of your cash undoubtedly completes the contract. When you have paid, then you have bought the goods. On the Internet this might not be the case. The difficulty arises because there is frequently an intermediary in the money taking process. This intermediary is not the bank merchant service provider, but a secondary "transaction service provider" (“TSP”), either approved by the banks to process Internet transactions, or operating its own business independently of any bank.
A TSP is not a party to the ecommerce transaction. What they do cannot of itself affect the contract. Their web page will often tell this to the buyer. Specifically, the fact that your customer gives their credit card details and receive confirmation of payment from the TSP intermediary may not create a contract between you (as provider of the goods or services) and them. We say, "may not" because the existence of the ecommerce contract depends on other factors too. You cannot rely on this factor in isolation. It is likely however, that the buyer can rely on the information provided by the TSP as evidence of the terms of the contract such as the subject matter of the sale.
Any communication sent to your customer by the intermediary, indicating completion of the ecommerce transaction, does not form part of the contract between you and the original supplier. However, if you, the seller, send confirmation, e.g. by e-mail, to the buyer, in terms which indicate that the transaction has been completed, then there can be little doubt that it has been completed. Simplest then, is to use terms and conditions which state when the ecommerce contract is made. You can specify a particular time or action, or even make the contract conditional on some future event, such as clearance of the customer’s payment.
If you sell a service on the Internet, such as a singles introduction service, and you allow a buyer to use the service before his payment has been processed, then the permission to use is likely to be treated by a court as a conditional acceptance of the contract, the condition being that your payment is cleared. If his payment is not cleared, then of course you are perfectly entitled to withhold further use of the service.
No matter how carefully you draw your ecommerce terms and conditions as a trader, they will not bind your customer if you cannot show that he has agreed to them before entering into the contract.
If your sale is to a person who buys as a consumer (and not in a business), then the conditions under which you sell are further restricted.
A correctly drawn terms and conditions document, and proper legal advice as to how to bring it to the attention of your customers, could save you many hours of customer disputes and avoid many charge backs by your bank service provider. The best way is to buy a draft ecommerce “terms and conditions” document from Net Lawman, and then to spend a little more to have it altered to suit your particular business and requirements. Whatever you do, do not just take a document from some other web site and use it. It is most unlikely to suit your business. You will also be breaching their copyright.
By the way, there is no magic in a T & C document. It cannot cover you for all buyers in all legal jurisdictions. Net Lawman terms and conditions are designed to protect your interest. This may involve an element of scaring your customer into doing nothing when in fact he may have a right to some recourse against you! It is up to you to soften the ecommerce terms to the extent that you feel most comfortable. The International element
Whether you are buyer or seller, the internationality of ecommerce adds an element of uncertainty. You can return faulty goods to a local store, but even if you spend two hours and £5 re-packing some gizmo to return it to a supplier in San Jose or Singapore, there is no guarantee that it will get there, or that the supplier will admit to receiving it. The Electronic Commerce (EC Directive) Regulations 2002 and The Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000 give strong protection to a UK consumer to the detriment of the supplier, but they do not protect a buyer from a problem with a seller elsewhere.
This lack of governmental control over ecommerce is an attraction to most Internet traders. The
downside is that most buyers are suspicious and cautious. However, the Internet also provides
gigantic competition. So, while you may take advantage of the freedom to set your terms of
trade and to ask for cash “up front”, your ecommerce business will go nowhere unless you do in
fact provide a level of service, which equals or exceeds that of a land based organisation. It
takes only one disgruntled customer to slate you in a forum and you are left wondering why
sales have dropped by 30% overnight. In a nutshell
When you put together your business plan for starting or extending an ecommerce business, it is essential to allow for the cost of basic legal protection. We see businesses waste hundreds of thousands of pounds in constructing a poor web site and marketing it even worse. The best investment many could have made would be £5,000 in legal documents and advice in setting up efficiently and effectively. When we started, we made that mistake too!
While you are dealing with documentation, it is a good idea to deal with all of it at once. Your advisor will deal at far lower cost with three documents at once than one in each of three months. |
