The research was conducted by the NCC Group and questioned 10,000 consumers on their views on the new gTLDs – generic top-level domains – being introduced to the Internet. It was published on April 9th.
A top-level domain is the suffix of a website address. Previously, only a handful were available such as “.com”, “.net” and “.org” alongside country codes. This summer, domain management body ICANN will be opening up nearly 600 more though that include domains like “.music”, “.cooking” and “.company”.
However, this radical change in the Internet has disconcerted many ordinary users. 87% of those surveyed said that they do not feel comfortable browsing sites using the new domains, which could hurt traffic and business to those websites.
NCC Group CEO Rob Cotton said: “The Internet is undergoing the biggest change in its history, causing uncertainty for consumers. We’ve also shown that the new domains are already being used for nefarious purposes, with users expressing security concerns too. Businesses cannot afford to do nothing here. The new gTLDs offer a wealth of possibilities for cyber criminals to attack an organisation’s online presence. Brand reputation, customer trust and ultimately revenue are all at risk.”
It is clear that companies must act fast to convince consumers to visit them on their new domains. The plan to make the Internet a more accessible place where companies can easily express their product type could dramatically backfire if this doesn’t happen and consumers can’t be reassured.
The findings come at around the same time as ICANN’s announcement that it is investigating a Canadian domain registrar who are offering up “.sucks” domains to brands before they are publicly available, seeking to gain large profits from companies eager to protect their names.
The idea is that “.sucks” could be used by the public to create pages of criticism on the brands, something they would obviously want to avoid and will pay to do by protecting the domain. This announcement is hardly going to reassure consumers though so it is crucial that people gain more education on the new domains quickly.
45% of those surveyed said that they would feel safer on sites using the new gTLDs if more explanation was given on how users’ personal information is being stored.
The survey was conducted in October 2014 with 5,000 people from the US and 5,000 people from the UK who regularly use the Internet for high-security activities like online banking and shopping and represented a range of age groups and an equal split in genders.
Of interest is the split between the US and UK respondents. People in the UK were shown to be more comfortable visiting sites with the new domains than the US ones at 14% as opposed to 12%.
UK respondents were also less likely to feel less secure as a consequence of the changes. 39% felt less secure using the new domains but it was 46% of American people surveyed.
