UKNM: Trusty Microsoft...

[Dan Leighton]

<bolshie open source fascist mood/>


Thought the comment about MS was amusing in the middle of this

interesting bit of research about the relative trusts people place in

.co.uks or .coms.


Shows the effect of branding over reality really doesn't it...


<thread ripe for a subject change mood/>


Interesting piece of research too.


Mind you haven't seen the full stats so without seeing the control

samples (if there were any) this may just be a piece of BS statistical

black magic. How much does the brand affect the perception as opposed to

the domain name extension, and how do you separate the two strands?...


Anybody from Henley Centre researchers on this list?


d. 


***


Much has been made of the fact that the web is global. Its "world-wide"

tag

shows how central it is to the ethos of the web. But consumers are now

showing that the local touch can be just as effective as the global.


When it comes to a web site address (URL) .co.uk is more popular than

.com,

according to new research from BT and Siemens Communications. Of those

who

expressed a preference, 60 per cent thought it was better for a company

to

be a .co.uk. Overall, 52 per cent thought it didn't make any difference

either way. 19 per cent of users thought it was best for a company to be

a

.com.


This goes against the received web wisdom, which has always preached

".com

at all costs". As the web-using population grows, so it changes in

character, and starts writing its own rules.


The most trusted web site in the UK is a .co.uk. It is bbc.co.uk - a

clearly

British, rather than global, brand. Companies can score with consumers

by

playing on the trust that locality engenders, as well as the endless

possibilities of globality.


Five of the top ten sites that performed best in the survey for trust in

the

UK are .co.uk (see table below).


Companies such as Yahoo have found that it is not enough to be global.

It

has over 20 national sites, and over 30 US metropolitan area sites. This

way

Yahoo gets the best of both worlds - the reputation for globality, with

the

local knowledge and trust of regionality.



Do you trust these sites to be honest and fair?


bbc.co.uk                       83%

yahoo.com                       75%

virgin.com                      66%

whsmith.co.uk                   63%

microsoft.com                   60%

marksandspencers.co.uk  60%

amazon.com                      59%

freeserve.co.uk                 55%

argos.co.uk                     54%

asda.com                        50%


***


Research from The Henley Centre. The study is called "From teleculture

to

e-culture" - for further information try James Sherwood at LeFevre (PR).


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