Choosing a Domain Name for Chinese Websites: Part 2
Foreign brands can take tips from popular local Chinese companies when choosing a domain name for their China strategy.
Foreign brands can take tips from popular local Chinese companies when choosing a domain name for their China strategy.
In my last column, I talked about the importance of having a good domain name in China. Today I will look at how some of the most popular websites in China chose their domain names, and what foreign brands can learn from this.
I have grouped these popular Chinese websites into the following categories:
Tencent’s web mail service uses a sub domain under its QQ instant messaging tool: mail.qq.com, while 163 and 126 are located under the sub domains of mail.163.com and mail.126.com.
163’s brand name is known in China as Wang Yi – “Wang” the Chinese word for Internet and “Yi” meaning ease.
It’s worth noting that in the early days, the numbers 163 became synonymous with the Internet – the first three numbers for dial-up modems in China at that time.
Youku uses its pinyin name as its domain name. Pinyin is the standardized system for the Romanized spelling of Chinese characters.
Letv.com on the other hand, uses a mix of pinyin and English for its domain name. It combines the Chinese “Le” – meaning happy – and the English word TV as its domain name. Its Chinese brand name is Le Shi – “shi” being the second character for the Chinese word for television “dianshi”.
Suning’s domain name reflects its Chinese pinyin name and has a .com domain extension. Gome is a more difficult name to remember and does not reflect its Chinese brand name Guo Mei directly. It uses a .com.cn domain extension.
These three online game sites are all using numbers in their domain names. The use of numerals in domain names is not uncommon in China.
Both of these online dating sites are using their Chinese pinyin names in their domain names.
These group buy websites are also using their Chinese pinyin company names in their domain names.
Neither of these domain names incorporate their Chinese pinyin brand names. pconline.com.cn comes from the brand’s English translation – Pacific Computer, while zol.com.cn’s brand name is Zhong Guan Chun.
The job application site zhaopin.com reflects its Chinese pinyin name, meaning “recruitment.” 51job.com has a domain name that combines numbers and English wording. liepin.com is the combination of two Chinese words in which “Lie” means “hunt” and “Pin” means “recruit.”
anjuke.com uses its Chinese pinyin in the domain name. fang.com uses a single word in the domain name in which “fang” means “properties” in Chinese.
The popular Chinese classifieds site 58.com has an extremely short domain name “58,” consisting of only numbers and has a .com domain extension.
Coming up with good domain names for Chinese websites should follow the key objective of being easy for users to remember.
Other tips include:
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