SMS.i.ng (i.e. www.sms.i.ng) was launched as a Bulk SMS Service in the 2014. The domain name made me proud. It was short, easy to remember, “brandable” and all I desired.
But I was wrong.
I woke up to this reality after many incidences. Something needed to be done.
The Problems with SMS.i.ng
- Very few people knew ‘.i.ng’, which was bad for business. It was so unpopular that even service providers in the domain name space didn’t even know it existed.For instance, after two years of operation, Alexa a popular domain analytics service still considered SMS.i.ng a sub-domain of www.i.ng and not a fully qualified domain. (Update: Alexa now recognises ‘.i.ng’ domains as domains, not sub-domains).
- It wasn’t easy to remember and so difficult to brand. Memorability builds on familiarity, and ‘.ng’ was NOT familiar.Not at all!Too many people confused the domain for SMS.ng or SMSi.ng.Not only that. Because they couldn’t pronounce it as is, they found it hard to type it in a browser.
“Es-em-es-dot-eye-dot-en-jee” is the way the name was initially meant to be pronounced.This wasn’t good for business.
- Connection issues and difficulty in accessing domain. ‘.i.ng’s unpopularity also meant that a lot of Domain Name System (DNS) providers did not know of its existence and our domain name didn’t resolve easily.Many clients often found it difficult to access our services. I found it very embarrassing when similar complaints kept pouring in.At first, we couldn’t tell what the issue was as we were unable to ascertain it from our end. We eventually figured out that the connectivity issues were being experienced while browsing via two particular telecom networks in Nigeria.We informed our clients and asked them to use our static IP address everytime they couldn’t access our website. But who wants to remember an IP address? Definitely not me! Isn’t that why domain names were formed?Even if everyone was cool with remembering IP addresses, how do you tell that to new clients trying to access the website?This was the last straw!
BulkSMSing or BulkSMSNigeria
After many brainstorming and strategy sessions, we selected either BulkSMSNigeria or BulkSMSing. Whichever was available.
BulkSMSNigeria.com was taken, so we got other BulkSMSNigeria extensions we considered worthwhile such as .co, .xyz and .org.
After our ordeal with SMS.i.ng we didn’t want any unfamiliar extensions again and couldn’t get ourselves to launch on the .co, .xyz, or the .org. Our hearts yearned and longed for the tried and trusted extension – the king of them all – a .com.
So we settled for BulkSMSing.com, rebranded and relaunched with a brand new in-house developed Bulk SMS Management Application portal.
To be continued…
