The Coordination Center published on its website a study “.RU and .РФ domains for Russian SMEs: Barriers and opportunities.” It is based on a survey carried out by the Coordination Center in the spring of 2021 among a thousand Russian businesses.
The aim of the study was to understand the motives underpinning decisions made by small and medium-sized enterprises in Russia to use or not to use .RU and .РФ domain names in their business undertakings.
The survey was carried out through semi-structured telephone interviews of about ten minutes each using a representative, random, non-repeating sample of Russian small and medium-sized businesses.
Most of these companies are focusing on the Russian market. This was the case for 62 percent of small businesses and 68 percent of medium-sized companies. Unsurprisingly, most of these companies had their own websites, although the share of respondents without a website was higher for small businesses. In fact, one in five companies arranges its online presence in a different way or has yet to create a website.
As expected, country-code domains have been a top choice for Russian SMEs with 68 percent of small businesses and 77 percent medium-sized enterprises choosing .RU. The key factor here is whether a company targets Russian users. In addition to this, many respondents said that using a .RU or a .РФ makes promoting a website on the Russian internet easier and more effective.
The main reason for choosing an international domain, such as .COM, was the focus on foreign users. The second most popular answer was that the desired domain name was already taken in the .RU and .РФ domains.
These findings confirm the conclusions from earlier surveys on why websites serve as a tool of choice for those seeking an online presence, and on why these websites appear in .RU and .РФ country-code domains. The study also helped pinpoint a number of myths that lead some users to opt for other domain zones, such as the supposed anonymity or hopes of operating outside of the national jurisdiction. These discoveries will come in handy when devising marketing strategies for promoting Russian country-code domain zones.
