[Sigia-l] Subdomain usability

[Christopher Fahey]

Dave wrote:
> Where is "home" when you do yahoo.com/maps? Is it the yahoo 
> portal page? that doesn't make sense to me. Maps is an 
> independent yet connected application, so shouldn't it have 
> some sense of primacy of its own? 
...
> Now that being said, I type maps.yahoo.com, but I wouldn't 
> type outlook.microsoft.com (unless i wanted to use otulook to 
> get microsoft mail). Instead I would type 
> microsoft.com/outlook as I don't see "outlook" in this case 
> as a "home", but rather as an understood part of a greater whole.


I suspect that the only reason why you see Google Maps as a separate
"independent yet connected application" and Microsoft's Outlook page as
"part of a greater whole" is only because you are used to using the
subdomain structure for Google Maps. In other words, your perception of the
Google brand structure is the *result* of their use of the subdomain and the
fact that you are the type of user who manually enters their URLs a lot.

I think it's both a usability and a branding issue:

Usability:
1) Nobody besides web geeks understand what the heck is going on with URLs
that don't start with WWW. Dave, you may type "maps.google.com" into your
browser, but I'd bet a ton of money that the vast vast majority of Google
Maps users click the "Maps" link on www.google.com. It's not so much the
risk of them typing WWW anyway, which is fixable, but it's the fact that
subdomain.domain.com *doesn't even look like a URL for a web site* to many
web users. 

2) When you type a URL that doesn't have WWW at the beginning, many
automatic link-creation features (such as in email clients) won't work, and
they'll leave it unclickable.

Branding:
1) Subdomains, as you've demonstrated, dilute the company brand and make it
harder to remember the core brand. With Google, this may not be an issue,
but with something like (I'm making this up) kooltool.havefun.com you're
basically shooting your company's name recognition square in the face.
Again, if it doesn't look like a normal company URL, nobody will remember
your web site address or your company's name.

I'm in the "Never use subdomains unless there is a insurmountable tech
reason to do so" camp.

-Cf

Christopher Fahey
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