We recently announced that we were changing our web address to become coop.co.uk. We wanted to let you know why.
Why Coop?
In the digital space it makes sense as it mirrors the new brand identity. It’s how the majority of our users find us when searching on the web. It’s also more user friendly when using mobile and touchscreen devices. Additionally, some social platforms do not support punctuation in a hashtag, so the “-” becomes problematic. For consistency we felt that it was better to remove it.
Why .co.uk?
We’ve found that .coop is relatively unknown to typical customers. Most are more familiar with .co.uk and .com.
Currently, we have many different web addresses and this presents a confusing picture. We felt the need to adopt a better strategy. That is consistent, sustainable, supports the brand and is easy for customers to understand. Moving to coop.co.uk gives us this opportunity. We will transition current and new sites into this url format in the coming months. It will allow us to better function as a group online. It will join up our businesses in a more logical manner and provide a better experience.
If you have any questions about this approach then please get in touch. Also for any council members or colleagues there is an open invitation to join us at our show and tell, every Wednesday at 10.15 – 10.45, on the 10th floor of 1 Angel Square in Manchester.
Nick – will we also be following this convention for our E-mail addresses?
Yes we will James. We’ll also write about that, but at the moment we are testing it and checking it’s working. So far it’s working well.
It’s true that .coop “is relatively unknown to typical customers”. But the whole point of using it was to help them to understand what makes us different as part of a worldwide movement with different values – something we have now lost through this change.
I agree with you in part Martin, however if customers aren’t find us on .coop how can we help them to understand why we are different? We need to go to where our customers and potential customers are and bring them on the journey.
It makes me angry & sad to lose .coop. Do the Digital team understand the significance of the domain? Why weren’t the Council consulted. Did anyone talk to Co-ops UK or the ICA? What on earth are the MNDs doing? We are not just a brand. I feel we are not supporting the movement as we should. Front line staff (who are hopefully members themselves) should be positively encouraging all customers to become members and members to use their cards and engage with the democracy even if only in more economic participation. Co.uk is for companies not co-ops.
Simplifying to Coop as our brand name yes. Removing .coop seems like fear of failure instead of rising to the challenge of showing, promoting and being proud of our difference.
Coop.coop seems catchy enough to my untrained eye, and I think would have been sufficient change to allow customers to find us.
There are fewer opportunities for typos too on coop.coop than coop.co.uk, although I accept that there is a keyboard shortcut for .co.uk on mobile devices.
As someone who took part in the push to get us to adopt .coop in the first place ( and who argued for ‘The Coop’ and that ‘the co-operative’ was too long and fussy…) I am disappointed this was not discussed at Council last time, during the digital presentation Mike gave, so that we could hear and understand the arguments for and against, and so that we could be assured that the issue had been looked at from an ethical standpoint
I would also like to have been /be briefed on the financial ethics involved in domain purchase. What were the considerations here please ?
… and of course, the key words here are ‘co-operation amongst co-operatives’ the 6th ICA principle.
….and this leads me to ask – where are we going on use of the Coop marque if we are ditching the .coop domain ???
I agree with the above. The Co-operative Group should be champions of the .coop domain. Why is it confusing to have both .coop and .co.uk?
I do not believe that most users find it difficult to go to a .coop domain because of lack of familiarity. These days almost everyone goes via a search engine for whatever they are looking for, especially now that every popular browser has a search function built-in to their address line. Anecdotally, that is exactly how I found this blog post.
The .coop domain is a reminder on the door stating that we are different, and I don’t think the Co-operative Group should be moving away from this.