It's 2020, where is your WWW?

You guessed it; by WWW we mean the subdomain that was used heavily in the 1990s to let people know that you were referring to the address of your web site (i.e. www.advancis.com). Over time, companies dropped the subdomain in their marketing materials as users became more savvy about the Internet. Web browsers did their part trying a few variations of a domain a user entered just in case she had forgotten www.

Fast forward 20 years. We looked at our homepage recently, marveling at the fact that the design, which has NOT CHANGED since 1999, was still looking modern. Remember those amateur pages. Even Apple wasn't that cool back in those days :-).

One item caught our attention though. Our little monitor illustration featuring the famous WWW subdomain on screen. Yes. This one: Surely, it was time to retire that file or at least place it in the web site archive section.
Then the new domain extensions began popping up. Having exhausted the inventory of possible top domain registrations ending in .com .org. and .net, ICANN introduced top domains like .bike .club .today .ventures.

Great news for new companies that want an easy-to-remember site address. But that's just it; people must know it is a web address. That's easy online when the name is hot-linked but in print or on signage, it is an entirely different story. People do not know the majority of these new extensions. So, who can honestly assume that plumbing.equipment is a web site address? If you are a great online marketer, you don't take a chance.

www to the rescue. It is time to revive the www subdomain trend for a few years or at least until the new .extensions become common knowledge. www.plumbing.equipment is more like it. Everybody knows what that means!

It also means that our beloved illustration gets a new lease on life.

P.S. if you are big on search engine optimization (as opposed to search optimization), the ramifications of the reintroduction of the www subdomain in the marketing plan means that you will need to secure an SSL certificate for both web addresses (i.e. https://advancis.com and https://www.advancis.com). Some hosting providers offer wild card SSL certificates (i.e. *.advancis.com) which will cover the requirements of SEs like Google which seem to favor secure sites. At least for the time being until someone tweeks the "algorithm" again.