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Quarantine induced e-commerce boom increased the number of .lt domains

The Internet Service Centre DOMREG at Kaunas University of Technology (KTU), the registry of .lt top-level domain, informs that the number of domains has increased to 213 106 in 2020. In comparison to 2019, a 7.1% increase in .lt domain names is recorded. Last year, the Latvian national domain .lv has increased by 3.1 % and the Estonian .ee – by 7.4 %.

The Head of KTU Internet Service Centre Daiva Tamulionienė thinks that the reason for the last year’s increased number of domains was the e-commerce boom caused by the quarantine restrictions.

“Most probably, the quarantine was the period that forced the businesses that were relatively new in the market to rapidly move online to survive and also, there was more time for the generation of new business ideas. Naturally, the change in circumstances impacted the behaviour of consumers and businesses. That is why we have seen the e-commerce boom marked by the creation of .lt domains for the operating businesses moving online as well as the new businesses, especially for the provision of virtual services”, – explains the Head of KTU Internet Service Centre D. Tamulionienė.

Daiva Tamulionienė, Head of KTU Internet Service Centre

Last summer, “Versli Lietuva” initiated a survey of the representatives of the e-shops of the Lithuanian small and medium-sized businesses who joined the business support initiative “There is no quarantine on the Internet” (Internete karantino nėra”) which was conducted by “Spinter tyrimai”. The survey revealed that because of the possibilities provided by e-commerce, one-fifth (19%) of the businesses have decided not to continue physical trading and conduct their activities only online. One-fourth (26%) of the businesses have planned to focus more on the development of online trading instead of physical trading while almost half (47%) of them intended to focus equally on the development of their online and physical trading. Only 7% of the surveyed entrepreneurs are committed to return to their physical trading after the quarantine.

“The decision of the businesses to actively move online and develop their online trading due to the restrictions of coronavirus pandemic has caused such an e-commerce boom; it would have taken years to get such results. However, new market players find this moving online challenging and often they fail to overcome these challenges and survive because e-commerce is much more than just a domain registration, creation of an e-shop, and uploading of the goods. It takes a lot of efforts and investments to ensure a sufficient recognition of trademarks and attraction of the traffic of visitors to the e-shop; these may be the most difficult tasks for a small business. These are probably the decisive reasons why many e-shops terminate their activities every year; we notice many unrenewed domains in .lt domain statistics”, – states D. Tamulionienė.

In 2020, almost 44 thousand new .lt domains were created while almost 30 thousand were deleted. .lt remains the most popular domain in Lithuania. According to the data of the association of European Internet country code top-level domain registries CENTR, approximately 59% of the Lithuanian customers chose this domain in 2020.

“If an e-shop is created for the Lithuanian market in the Lithuanian language, we recommend to choose .lt domain because local citizens have more confidence in this domain and write the Lithuanian part of the name .lt in the browser’s address line by force of habit. However, we can see the businesses that fail to find an available preferred name in .lt domain and are quick to choose another one and lose their share of visitors or even worse – their competitors have created a website with the same name in another domain. We advise to avoid such situations and search for the ideas of the domain name that make it unique, not misleading to the customers and coinciding with the trademark you plan to introduce to the market”, – emphasises D. Tamulionienė.

Currently, there are 66 Lithuanian and 59 foreign registrars providing the procedural services of .lt domain. KTU Internet Service Centre DOMREG is the registry of .lt domain; its main tasks are the management of .lt domain infrastructure and ensuring the functioning of the Domain Name System (DNS) online.

Published 2021-02-08