Local or International? The Little Details People Miss

When starting a business, it’s important to know your scope. Do you want to be a local business? Do you want to take your reach to a national or even international scale? Knowing this is one thing but there are a few little details that often get overlooked in this decision.

.com or .com.au

Firstly, when it comes to domain names you should always look to protect your name/business by purchasing both the .com and .au. But which one should you be using?

The question to ask is, am I a local, national or international brand? If you will forever be a local or national brand servicing Aussie people, only then would you use the .au. This just provides an extra piece of security for people when they are (in particular) buying things from an online store.

Likewise if you are an international brand, .com will be the way to go. .com is the most commonly used domain suffix globally and so will be more easily found by someone in, lets say, America than a .au site would.

International and Area Codes

It is important to know which numbers you need on your business card and website. I see time and time again business’s using area codes when they have no need to. This just makes things more complicated than they need to be. So when is the right and wrong time to use these?

Again, this comes down to whether you are an international, national or local business. If you are a local business and know your customer base isn’t outside your state let alone Australia, then a +61 code is pointless. However this would be essential for someone looking to market internationally.

So while the big decisions may seem sorted, don’t forget about the little things.