You’ve got to love the website www.christmas.com.
The Maple Ridge company LeftoftheDot is banking on it, expecting millions of visits to the website as Santa season begins.
In partnership with the original domain owner, LeftoftheDot is bringing the address alive and hoping this Christmas will be a boost to the company that matches small companies with marketable website domain names.
“We own Christmas.com,” said Luke Stibbs, media and public relations manager for the small firm located above a veterinarian’s shop in Maple Ridge.
“If you search on Google right now, we’re in the top four results.”
While Christmas shopping websites are plentiful, the domain name, christmas.com website is the most intuitive for time-pressed websurfers and smart phone typers who are challenged in the area of gift giving.
Stibbs said that previous work that Leftofthedot did for a client led that client to put some faith in the company to revive his www.christmas.com address.
“It’s been inactive basically. Until it could be done right, he didn’t want to do it.”
Now the site is working and in weeks will be fully up and running allowing shoppers to simply select a category that matches the intended gift recipient. Once selected, dozens of gift ideas will pop up allowing dozens of choices. Christmas.com also allows shoppers to order from several suppliers. If they want, shoppers also can go directly to merchandisers’ websites, although Leftofthedot would prefer they didn’t.
Stibbs said last year there were more than 10 million searches for the word Christmas.
“We just can’t pass this up. It’s the opportunity of a lifetime.”
“We can only imagine how much it will grow now that there is a real site, built and operating at www.christmas.com.”
Christmas though is only part of Leftofthedot’s business plan.
Its main purpose is to find businesses that match its domain names.
Often, Leftofthedot will partner with the owners of the domain names, then find businesses that closely match those domain names, develop the site and create a sales and marketing plan to maximize returns.
Stibbs said co-owners Chris Jensen and John Lyotiers’ backgrounds in computer programming is allowing innovation, such as improving sub-domain names that allow an extra word to be placed between left of the dot and right of the www, further customizing web addresses.
“Our software is at the point where we can sub-domain it easily now,” said Stibbs.
“We’re really helping small business.”
Stibbs said he’s even excited about his e-mail address, luke@christmas.com, adding he’s never had an e-mail address like that before.