I'm in the process of starting an e-commerce site. I will sell mostly in the UK but will also ship worldwide. I have bought the .co.uk domain.
I'm wondering if I should also buy the .com domain. This would cost me £100 as someone already has this but they will give it up for £100. If so which domain would it be best to market the site under; .com or .co.uk
I know .com is more popular but my only concern is that when I want to buy something in the uk I will often search google.co.uk and check the "pages from the UK" radio button in google. I do this so I only get UK based sites which I know will deliver to the UK.
I'm not sure if this is common practice among other users but if it is my site wouldn't show up for those users.
Whilst Nominet might be a little biased :) it makes sense especially for things that require shipping costs, and user interaction like telephone calls and support when things need changing/replacing/servicing etc.
Getting the .com is very good advice from buckworks at this point, because some people will "remember" your widgets.co.uk as widgets.com and if your widgets.co.uk is successful widgets.com may suddenly become more expensive in the future.
If you can pick them up cheaply I'd get the .info/.net/.org/.biz too especially if you plan on investing a lot of time and resources into your site.
I'm not sure if this is common practice among other users but if it is my site wouldn't show up for those users.
The .com will show up in the UK Serps if it is registered to a UK address, seen to be a UK company and especially so if hosted on UK servers.
If you're intending going global then start with what you intend to do and go .com using your other extensions as informational splash pages with direct navigational links to the main site.
Don't forget to get the .eu and .asia extensions as well, more cheap insurance for the future.
