Domain Names for a Business That Works in Two Languages

Two names for one business

A business that works in two languages often ends up with two names: the English one, and a French or Chinese one on the sign, the business cards and the ads in a community paper.

Sooner or later someone asks whether the website should have a domain in each language. The registrar's checkout page usually suggests buying both, along with half a dozen other endings.

The useful question is what the second domain would do. Some do a real job. Many just renew every year and send people to pages they cannot read.

When a second domain helps

• Customers know you by your name in the other language.
• You advertise in that language, in print, on radio or on signs.
• The name is short and easy to say in that language.
• Someone else holding it would confuse your customers.
• It can lead straight to pages written in that language.

The last is the condition the others depend on. A domain in Chinese or French that opens English pages makes a promise the site then breaks, at the exact moment a customer has made the effort to type it.

When it does not

A second domain does nothing for search on its own. Google finds pages in another language through what they say and the links between them, not through the domain they sit on.

A long translated name that nobody says aloud, or one registered only because the registrar suggested it, adds cost and nothing else.

And without pages in that language, the honest first step is to write them. The domain can wait.

French names and accents

A .ca domain can include French accented letters, and the accented and plain versions of a name are reserved for the same holder.

Even so, most people type without accents. Print, say and use the plain spelling, and hold the accented one alongside it.

Keep accents out of email addresses altogether. Plenty of mail systems still handle them badly.

Chinese names and romanised spellings

Some endings accept domains written in Chinese characters (.ca does not), but they are awkward in practice. Typing them means switching keyboards, and some browsers and email programs show them as a string beginning xn--.

Most businesses use a romanised spelling instead, and there are usually several. Mandarin pinyin and Cantonese romanisations of the same name can look quite different.

Use the spelling your customers actually say and recognise. Print the Chinese name and the domain side by side, so one confirms the other.

One site, with a section for each language

However many domains a business holds, it is usually best served by one website with a section for each language, each page at its own address and linked to its equivalent.

One site means one hosting plan, one set of updates and one place where links from other sites build up.

Two complete sites on two domains suit larger organisations with staff to keep both current. For a small business, the second site tends to fall behind the first within a year.

How to point the second domain

Send it on with a permanent redirect, the kind developers call a 301, straight to the first page of the matching language section. Browsers follow it instantly, and search engines treat the main site as the real address.

Avoid masked forwarding, which keeps the second domain in the address bar and shows the main site inside a frame. Links break, phones handle it badly and search engines see an empty page.

Avoid copying the site onto the second domain as well. Two copies split whatever search history the site has and double the work of every update.

If the main site runs on HTTPS, the certificate needs to cover the second domain too, or visitors who type it with https see a warning before the redirect.

Email stays on one domain

Choose one domain for email and use it everywhere. Addresses on two domains confuse customers and split conversations between inboxes.

Set the second domain to forward any mail it receives to the main addresses, so a customer who guesses an address still reaches someone.

A worked example

A Cantonese roast meat shop in a suburban shopping plaza sells roast duck, barbecued pork and soy sauce chicken by weight over the counter, and roasts whole pigs to order for weddings, birthdays and business openings.

Most of its customers order in Cantonese or Mandarin. The Chinese name fills its sign, and whole-pig orders tend to follow its ads in a Chinese-language newspaper.

The site already had a Chinese section. But the second domain printed in those ads, a Cantonese spelling of the Chinese name, was set up as masked forwarding to the English home page.

Readers typed it and found English pages, inside a frame that broke when they tapped a link on a phone. Many simply phoned instead.

This autumn the forwarding was replaced with a permanent redirect to the first page of the Chinese section, which now leads with how to order a whole pig, and the certificate was extended to cover the second domain.

The ads now print the Chinese name, the domain and the phone number together. Email stays on the English domain, and both domains sit in one account with the same renewal date.

Keep the domains together

Hold every domain in the same registrar account, in the business's name, with automatic renewal and matching renewal dates.

A second domain printed in ads matters as much as the first. If it lapses, whoever registers it next receives every customer who types it.

Write down what each domain points to, so nobody removes a redirect in a tidy-up without knowing the ads depend on it.

The counter-case

A business whose customers in the second language find it through search, referrals or a listing may never need a second domain. The pages matter far more than the address.

Registering a name only to keep others from it is cheap and sometimes sensible, but it is protection, not marketing. One or two names are enough.

Where customers do know you by a name in another language, register its plain spelling and send it to pages in that language.

Two names, one site

1. Write down your name in each language.
2. Ask customers which spelling they use.
3. Build the pages in that language first.
4. Register the plain spelling people will type.
5. Redirect it permanently to the matching section.
6. Keep email on one domain.
7. Hold every domain in one account.

Step five is where most second domains go wrong. Registering a name takes a minute, but pointing it at the right pages, the right way, is what makes it worth renewing.

Deciding which pages deserve translating in the first place is covered in customers who search in Chinese or Punjabi.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.