passed on the change. For example, we considered whether applying for a generic top level domain (gTLD), such as .nuts, would make sense for us. We decided against it because the URL structure is not familiar to customers, and so could be confusing. We also thought that the cost to apply for the gTLD ($185,000 and $25,000 per year to maintain the URL), with no guarantee that we would be able to secure the domain, was better invested into improving our customer experience and, thus, increasing the customer lifetime value.
We did not handle the brand or our new domain name lightly. As a reward for our efforts, we received hundreds of positive comments from customers expressing their love for the company, our products, and our brand, regardless of our name. And, year-over-year, we’ve experienced significant growth in traffic (66 percent) and revenues (43 percent).
Many critics told us that spending for a generic domain name was a recipe for failure, citing examples such as books.com, shoes.com, and pets.com. However, the success of a company and a brand is not determined quite so unilaterally. Several generically-domained companies we’ve seen struggle have suffered at the hands of competitors that were not necessarily better named, but that had inherent strengths in customer service, operations, and, as a result, brand loyalty. What would Amazon be without its logistic and meticulous attention to on-site experience (1-click ordering, anyone)? Or what would Zappos be without its trademark commitment to customer service? And, while Pets.com didn’t sell actual pets and was perhaps a bit of a misnomer, that was the least of its many operational problems.
For us, purchasing the nuts.com domain name and re-branding to Nuts.com was definitely the right decision. The revenue increases we’ve seen since the transition have definitely already been worth the price of admission. Our brand is more than just our domain name; our company identity and our commitment to customer service have been carefully and thoughtfully cultivated for more than eight decades. And this has been our secret to a successful rebranding.
Author: Anne Swift
Anne is passionate about marketing, entrepreneurship, and collaborative innovation systems. Glamour Magazine named Anne a visionary who will change the world for her work with Young Inventors International.
As the founder of Young Inventors, Anne has trained more than 3,000 university innovators around the world, at institutions such as MIT, Carnegie Mellon University, University of Wisconsin at Madison, and Northeastern University. Under Anne’s leadership, Young Inventors held conferences at MIT, Carnegie Mellon, and the University of Toronto. She is the pioneer of BrainBuzz, a structured methodology for using collaborating teams to solve technology challenges at institutions such as MIT's Innovations in International Health and the Ashoka Foundation.
Currently, Anne is the Head of Marketing (a.k.a. Chief Marketing Nut) at Nuts.com. In early 2008, Anne co-founded a solar thermal building materials start-up, which installed the largest, and award-winning, solar thermal project in Pennsylvania. Anne has also consulted for the MaRS Discovery District, the Cleantech Venture Network, and technology start-up companies, including many social ventures. She has been a judge of several business plan competitions, including the MIT IDEAS Competition, the Stanford BASES Competition, Ashoka-Lemelson Invention Competition, and San Jose State University’s Neat Ideas Fair.
With training as an economist, Anne has conducted research on how organizations can successfully work together to identify and commercialize innovations, as well as how innovations arise in collaborative group settings. Anne’s work included research positions with the Innovation Systems Research Network at the University of Toronto and Carnegie Mellon University with support from the Kauffman Foundation. Anne also holds certificates from the World Intellectual Property Organization in intellectual property and management of innovation. Anne’s work has appeared in Science Magazine, IEEE Spectrum, Forbes, Popular Science, NPR, and many other major media outlets. For more information about Anne’s background, please visit www.anneswift.com.
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