dotukIf you own a .co.uk domain name, you may not know that for the next 5 years, you have first rights over the corresponding .uk domain.

The details are here on the Nominet website who administer the .co.uk and .uk domains.

What is interesting is many UK companies have not made the switch yet, leaving consumers to type in the lengthy .co.uk domain extension rather than the more simple .uk

I am sure that companies that are yet to make the switch (namely pretty much every high street brand and broadcaster I can find) will say that there is a lot of work to do in order to make the switch, but I’d love to see bbc.uk and hsbc.uk – so much easier to type than their .co.uk cousins.

The UK is one of the few countries left along with Australia (.com.au) and New Zealand (.co.nz) that have these second level domain structures.

So if UK companies are slow to make the move, now is the time for individuals and smaller companies to make the move and stand out with a .uk domain.

The other thing about .uk is that they are cheap!

For around £4.60 per year from companies such as Gandi you can have your own .uk domain.

I have even swapped out the more expensive domains that I had been using for DNS, for example I was using london.mx which costs around £30/year for my website domain name server, and now use ondns.uk at just £4.60/year.

I have written at length before about personal branding, and I am still amazed that when I speak to business schools and at conferences, many people aren’t realising the power of their OWN domain.

gandi-net

The company I use for my domains even throw in FREE email (1GB) with 5 email addresses, and anti-spam. More details on the Gandi website.

So for around the cost of a cup of coffee you can go from using-googles-brand@gmail.com to myownbrand.uk – and this looks a lot better on business cards and shows that you mean business. You can of course forward your gmail to your myownbrand.uk email address, and when you reply, people will see that you have a new email address – one that looks and sounds much better than gmail.

Now that .uk is available, and at such a low cost – what is stopping you?

And if you already have a .co.uk you should grab the .uk variant now!