When branding a company, product, or program online your URL
must be descriptive, succinct, memorable, and above all: user-friendly.
If only the Transportation Security Administration would have
realized that sooner, they could have avoided their embarrassment this past week.
Since 2011, they have used a URL for their website that promotes a pre-screening
process that travelers can use to expedite domestic travel. Unfortunately for
them, the URL, www.tsa.gov/tsa-pre✓™, included check mark and trademark characters, both of
which most people don’t know how to access from their keyboard. End result?
Many people were unable to access the website.
Those two symbols scrambled the URL and led visitors to a
404 page, meaning the page could not be found. The TSA has since changed the
URL to www.tsa.gov/tsaprecheck. Maintaining
the symbol usage in the URL may have initially seemed like a nice commitment to
branding standards, but ultimately made an agency not known for efficiency
appear more inefficient.
So how can you avoid making TSA’s mistakes? Here are tips on
choosing a URL that conveys your desired message without driving away traffic
or garnering criticism.
1. Ensure the URL
is succinct. If cleanliness is next to godliness, brevity will gain you
online divinity. If your company, product, service or initiative’s name is verbose,
think about using initials, or just the first one or two words. For instance, the
White House uses http://www.whitehouse.gov
and not www.thewhitehouse.gov, or theuswhitehouse.gov) because the URL is
short, concise and memorable.
2. Avoid common
misspellings. Try to avoid words
that are commonly misspelled and words with silent or double consonants, or an
extra vowel, like “column” or “vacuum.” For added insurance, you can easily buy
up common misspellings of your URL and have them redirect to the proper
spelling. It’s a one-time fix that will prevent you from losing traffic.
3. Avoid hyphens
and other symbols that could cause confusion. They are easily forgotten
and lost in translation, and are best reserved for subpages where hyphens are a
necessity. Also, keys that do not appear on most keyboards – i.e. check marks
and trademark characters should be avoided as they’ll discourage users from
accessing your website.
4. Consult an
expert. In theory, a skilled web developer and designer should be
involved in the production of your site as well as a communications strategist
you can provide insight into proper branding and messaging. Your website should
be the first online entry point into information about your organization. It’s
important to make a good first impression.
These are a few of the basics to get you started in deciding
on a URL. Of course we’re happy to help you advance the process. Visit www.pcgpr.com to learn more.