Rebranding? Don’t let your domain name lapse!

If you’re rebranding, you might decide to change your domain name.

While it might seem like a refreshing or exciting change, here’s a couple of things that can make this tricky:

• Many customers will have your current email and website address saved as your contact point.
• Any previous marketing material, business stationery and advertising will still have your current domain name published.
• Search engines (eg. Google) will have positioned your website address in their search results, based on all of the work you have put into your current website.

So a new domain name means that ultimately, you are starting over online. This might not bother you too much; you might have a new website with completely different information. But if you’re wanting customers to still be able to find you via your old details – don’t let your domain name lapse!

The best thing to do is redirect your current domain name to your new domain name/website. Also make sure to do the same with your email addresses, so no emails are missed.

You might find that people finding or emailing you via your old domain name will dwindle eventually, but still hold onto the ownership your domain name, even if you do stop the redirection. If you ever let ownership go, anyone out there can buy it and set up their own website and email addresses. If they set up the same email addresses that you used, they can potentially receive correspondence from your customers who haven’t updated your details – which can be a huge security risk.

With your website, make sure to redirect all pages on your current website to the relevant page on your new website – not only will this help your customers find you (and not see errors!), it will help the search engines update and replace their results sooner, which helps your business too.