The Internet has connected China for a whole decade. It affects people’s lives and at the same time has penetrated into the management and operation of enterprises. Nonetheless, Chinese enterprises just started to access the Internet, while for enterprises in developed countries, it has long been the most common management practice used in routine management, strengthening of communication among teams and liaison with clients. Obviously, there is still much more room for the Internet to be applied in enterprises.

From the experience of the pains suffered when the bubbles of the Internet broke and the joys felt when it recovered from the slump, it can be seen that the future development of the Internet in China depends on its complete integration with the traditional economy and transformation of the traditional industries to boost its competitiveness by virtue of the infinite potentials contained on its platform. In face of the business opportunities brought by the integration of the Internet and the traditional economy, many Chinese enterprises are apparently not well prepared.

Vinton G. Cerf, chairman of the board of Internet Corporation for Assigned Name and Numbers (ICANN), called respectfully as the “Father of the Internet”, visited China recently. He stressed that registering a domain name is a key step for a user to access the Internet and a basis for its application. Judging from the development of the Internet in the world, the popularity rate of domain names is one of the primary parameters to measure whether the Internet is well developed or not in a country. The popularity rate of domain names is 11 percent in North America and reaches as high as 12.5 percent in Europe, while in China, which has over 20 million enterprises, there are only more than 300,000 domain names under .CN and the total number of domain names is only 1.187 million, including a lot of governmental and individual websites.

When enterprises in developed countries in Europe and the USA have started to access the Internet in an all-round way to fully release the infinite online potentials to create value, many Chinese enterprises still linger off the Internet and are left behind by their foreign counterparts for not having attached enough importance to registering domain names up to now and not getting the pass to the Internet.

In developed countries in Europe and the USA, it’s already an important way of business development to use corporate websites to release information, promote brands and conduct e-commerce. With the rapid expansion of the nodes on the Internet, domain names, as signs of corporate websites in the Internet world, have the same significance as trademarks and brands in the real world and are a rare resource. In another word, domain names are like a Chinese dictionary and registration is like tearing down several pages every day. When you want to register, the characters you want have already been taken away by somebody long before.

For China as a latecomer, .CN, the top-class domain name for the country, is more important for Chinese enterprises. Enterprises and individuals in Europe and the USA have possessed the most valuable domain names when the Internet developed to this stage. It is quite difficult nowadays for many Chinese enterprises that have realized the importance of domain names and the Internet to register domain names wholly compatible with their brands.

Comparatively speaking, .CN holds richer resources of domain names and more choices for Chinese enterprises. In recent years, as the .CN registration management institution, the China Internet Information Center did a lot in registration and promotion of the state domain name of .CN and made it one of the fastest growing domain name in the world. But 300,000 domain names registered under .CN are still quite incompatible with 20 million enterprises in China.

Then why many Chinese enterprises took an indifferent attitude towards registration of domain names? In short, many traditional enterprises haven’t realized the importance of the resources of domain names on the Internet and haven’t thought highly enough of the meaning of registering domain names. It is not difficult to see from the development of the Internet in the world that domain names are the basis of communication of the whole Internet and the registration of domain names is no less important to an enterprise than the name and ID card to a person in real life. Chinese enterprises do not fully understand the importance of domain names and the urgency of their registration, reminiscent of the beginning of the reform and opening up to the outside world when domestic enterprises didn’t pay enough attention to logos and trademarks.

Although a considerable number of Chinese enterprises have registered their domain names, it doesn’t mean they know how to use the names correctly. The misunderstandings enterprises have of domain names are mainly: Regarding domain names only as electronic registrations for administrative purposes and not knowing the entire connotation of domain names and how to design their domain names accurately. Enterprises’ names are translated literally into the Chinese phonetic letters or English words only and such domain names generally don’t leave a deep impression on people to achieve the expected promotional results and even adversely affect the smooth development of the websites.

For an enterprise that wants to develop business through the Internet, each party of a transaction can only recognize the other by its domain name in the virtual world, which has the irreplaceable function of “passport”, just as enterprises never name their products randomly and put them on the market. Hence enterprises must regard domain names as an important component of their corporate identity (CI) systems and pay enough attention to them. After registering domain names, websites have to be built correspondingly, otherwise registering domain names is meaningless.

Some Chinese enterprises confuse registration of domain names with application to the Administration for Industry and Commerce for Trademarks and think the only thing to do is to prevent online infringement of rights. But they don’t know that the real meaning of a domain name is indicating the real existence of an enterprise besides showing its image and identity because browsers click a domain name in order to see the actual contents online. If what they access is just a blank page, how can they be interested in an empty shell? If enterprises think they lack special knowledge or energy to establish a website, they can absolutely entrust the work to a specialized company, which can both reduce expenses and achieve the goal.

The march online starts from domain names. Chinese enterprises that don’t want to be left behind in the age of the Internet should deepen their understanding of the importance of domain names, recognize the connotation and application of domain names and have their own “online IDs” to enhance their competitiveness by the huge energy contained on the Internet.

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Reproduced with permission from China Economic Net