What the DNA note regarding fresh TLDs tells us

Few people know regarding them, but they like the idea of more choice.

The Domain Name Association (DNA) released results of a survey this morning designed to understand consumer sentiment toward domain names, and especially fresh top level domain names.

DNA is very much an advocacy group for the adoption of fresh top level domain names, yet I found its survey to be fair regarding the challenges to collecting data regarding fresh TLDs and its question methodology.

A lot of the questions were hypothetical regarding which site you’d visit, offering a number of identical second level domains with varying top level domains. For example, for the question “Where would you go to pay bills online?”:

Each of the questions like this included .com, the local ccTLD and four fresh TLD options (many of which aren’t available yet). I wonder how the results would have differed if the survey used just one fresh TLD per survey-taker. In other words, with 67% of the choices fresh TLDs, did this bias answers to fresh TLD choices in aggregate?

Still, the answer to the above question is rather interesting. It shows a definite interest in .secure compared to other TLDs (especially .bank) when it comes to something that people want to do securely. I’d be really curious to see how people would answer this question comparing just fresh TLD choices. If anyone wants to underwrite that, I’d be happy to look at leading a study on it.

Another hypothetical asked “Where would you buy shoes if you lived in Melbourne?” and Australian survey respondents stated:

While this might look good for geo domains, I don’t think this question has much value. It’s much like using the same term searched for in Google on an Adwords landing page: people see the similarity and are more likely to convert. I imagine that’s what happened for these questions.

The note showed that awareness of fresh top level domain names is rather low, and I think most people will agree with that. In fact, the DNA survey probably overshoots awareness by saying 25% are aware of expansion of TLDs. The note notes that this is likely due to the subset of users who took the survey. (There were anomalies in answers to this question, counting regarding a 15% “yes” answer in the U.S. and 70% in Mexico, a difference that can’t easily be explained.)

I also wonder if this question was asked at the beginning of the survey or following people had by now answered lots of questions regarding fresh TLDs.

Respondents also indicated they’d like more choice when it comes to domain names, but I rarely see people say they don’t want more choice in anything.

One result that ought to delight everyone in the domain name industry is a question regarding search vs. typing in domain names. While search beats typing in domain names, 35% say they navigate most often by typing domain names directly into the browser. 85% say they type domain names in at least part of the time.

DNA members received a complete data set of the survey; the subset note is available on DNA’s website (pdf).