Time to assassinate some characters

Lengthy domain names were invented by nerds, for nerds. So let's put a contract out on them varmint dots, dashes and abbreviations, and be rid of 'em once and for all

It used to be that first tasks when considering a business enterprise was checking to see if an appropriate, clear, descriptive, easy to remember Limited Company name was available.

Today, however, it would be folly for any business or organisation to even think of incorporating without having secured an appropriate, clear, descriptive and easy to remember web address. Your domain name not only helps define you but is a first port of call for punters who want your services. So domain names have to be simple or blisteringly obvious, to enable you to you get found.

Unless you're a school. Because all UK schools have the most complex domain monikers helpfully bestowed on them by the Local Authority and Nominet, derived from to the Authority name. It’s handy for LA’s, because it arguably follows a logical pattern - Council administrators, like Raymond Babbit, tend to cope better with things that way. It’s equally handy for companies marketing schools, because you know that if many cases, if you prefix your address with head@ your email stands a better than average chance of reaching a headteacher’s inbox.

But for all other human beings - especially ones under eleven - these names make zero sense. To the average joe they're collections of characters, abbreviations tacked onto the end of other abbreviations. And they fail miserably because humans like things to be as short, simple and memorable as possible.

Be simple - or be ignored

I know we can’t all have domains like asda.com, but adding letters, dots and hyphens for the hell of it is just asking for trouble. Tim Berners-Lee, who put the unnecessary http:// bit in all web addresses, recently admitted his mistake, but Local Authorities still stumble blithely on, doling out domain conventions for school sites and email addresses with more extraneous characters than the funeral scene in Ghandi. Suffixes like bathnes.sch.uk or rctednet.net are unlikely to win any usability awards. And hands up who wants their child to be educated by a bunch of .westberks?

Choose a long domain and confusion always lurks. Let’s pretend that you work in reception at the (fictitious) Moorhampton Primary in South Gloucestershire. The phone rings - a parent asks if they can email you something. What is your address? You start by taking a long breath and pouring a vodka.

‘OK, ready? Have you got a pen? Our email address is: ‘Office-at-Moorhampton Primary School, that's moorhampton all one word, dash, no, I mean hyphen - no, one of those dashy things thats sits on the bottom, what do you call it, wunderbar? - Er, primaryschool all one word, dot-southglous - all one word - with the u – no in glos not in south - well it is in south of course - dot-guv-dot-U-K. No, guv. Yes, Gee-Oh-Vee-dot-uk. Did you get that? G for gertie, O for….’

Location, location

Some schools reading this may say, 'Well Michael, it's all set in stone now, and we can't possibly change because everyone else does it this way. It's how things are.' Which is precisely how paradigms get embedded, accepted and reinforced, and poor practice becomes accepted. Of course we can change it. It just takes a few forward-thinking individuals to revolt. Like British Bulldogs, someone has to break the line. Who's in?

This is why I'm completely in favour of the few schools who buck the trend and prefer to use more standard-sounding top-level domains (.com, .co.uk etc) names when they can get them. Obviously these days, many TLD's are accounted for, but this can still work well, especially if based upon your locality or a village. If you are, say, Tadcot Gurney Primary, chances are no-one is likely to have registered www.tadcotgurney.com because the phrase makes absolutely no sense at all to anyone but a Wurzel. But give it a context, and to an enquirer on school business, it all suddenly becomes obvious. It's basic marketing good sense. And it's the way the web is supposed to work.

So when my consultancy registered www.combedown.com, it proved wonderfully alliterative to say, (c-d-d-c), simple to hear, and totally comprehendable, especially when compared with the Authority alternative: combedown-pri.bathnes.sch.uk.

And you never, ever, have to say it twice.

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