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February 02, 2010

Successful Ecommerce Business: Protecting Your Brand

The amount of good domain names left on the market is quickly diminishing, as are the amount of good brand names. Choosing the right domain name can be a very difficult process, and once you finally find a name that is memorable and suitable for your business, you'll want to do everything in your power to protect it. Your domain name is synonymous with your online brand, and once the uniqueness of your domain name is compromised, the identity of your business will soon follow. Having solid online identity is perhaps the most important aspect of running an ecommerce business. Over time the value of your business grows based on the popularity of your website, and the popularity of your website is directly related to the popularity of the name that represents it. The information found here will help you keep your online identity in tact.

The Dangers of Ecommerce

The world of ecommerce an extremely competitive one that is teeming with cut-throat business minded individuals that would do anything to get ahead of the competition. Many times the brand of a business is capitalized upon by it's competitor, and the hard-earned popularity of the business is literally stolen by the opportunist competitor. Protecting your online brand means protecting your domain name, and any of the items that make comprise your brand, including logos, slogans, artwork, and any other idea that is unique to your business. Using the following two methods alone will help you secure your online identity to prevent the loss of thousands of dollars in business.

Register All Similar Domains

The main method unscrupulous competitors will use to steal the popularity of your brand is name cloning. This is when domains with names that are similar to your domain's name are bought and used to attract customers that would otherwise be yours. A good example of basic name cloning would be someone buying and publishing a .net domain with the same name as a popular .com domain. For example, there may be an extremely popular website that goes by the name of “popularwebsite.com;” the perpetrator will then register a domain with the name “popularwebsite.net” in hope of stealing some of it's competitors traffic. They will also try to purchase domain names that have close spellings, such as “popular-website.com”.To prevent this form happening make sure you purchase all extensions and all close spellings that pertain to your domain name.

Trademark Your Name

The above method can prevent competitors form registering a domain that is similar to yours, but it will not keep them from stealing your brand name or using a similar name to promote their business. Competitors will do anything to capitalize and minimize the success of another business owner, including stealing log ideas, slogan ideas, brand names, and any other intellectual property that is fair game. To prevent your hard work from falling into the hands of your competitors, you'll need to trademark every idea you plan on using as soon as you conceptualize it.

Tags: ecommerce business,  brand names,  brand cloning,  artwork,  trademark,  slogans,  online identity,  online brand,  logos,  intellectual property