The online retailer was one of the most prominent adopters of the .co ccTLD. .co, of course, is the ccTLD for Colombia, but many domain name registrars have been pushing it hard since its 'relaunch' last year. And it's not hard to understand why: .co is .com without the 'm'. So it must be at least two-thirds as good as .com, right?
Not quite. After trying to rebrand itself as O.co, Overstock.com has decided to revert back to Overstock.com, "for now." Insisting that "We're still focused on getting to O.co," Overstock.com President Jonathon Johnson admitted to AdAge, "We were going too fast and people were confused".
The cost of "going too fast": after featuring O.co in television ads, updating its website and even changing the signage on a sports stadium it owns the naming rights to, Overstock.com found that many were going to o.com, not o.co. That was an obvious problem because Overstock.com doesn't own o.com.
The fact that a good number of consumers didn't get the .co branding probably isn't that surprising to most of us, but even so, Overstock.com's blunder serves as a powerful reminder: if it isn't broken, don't try to fix it. When it comes to domain names, it's hard to go wrong with .com.
