LiveChat is an online customer service software provider offering live chat support that can be utilized by its clients on their websites. The company was founded in 2002, and it has been using the less than ideal LiveChatInc.com domain name for its website. Earlier this week, LiveChat sent an email to customers announcing that it migrated its website to the brand match LiveChat.com domain name. LiveChat CEO Mariusz Cieply also announced the news via Twitter:
Saying goodbye to …inc.com! Go to https://t.co/4QW5WKWS7Q – we have been all waiting for this moment more than a decade now! Thank you LiveChat team!
— Mariusz Cieply (@mariuszcieply) March 24, 2020
After learning about the move to LiveChat.com, I reached out to the company to ask a few questions about the acquisition of the domain name.
LiveChat acquired LiveChat.com in January of 2020. The company acquired the domain name directly from the former registrant. The company has opted not to disclose the acquisition price of the domain name. If I were to guess, I would imagine the company paid well into the six figures to acquire the domain name.
According to a LiveChat company representative, “The purchase of the domain is related to our marketing strategy consequently realized with the implementation of other products: ChatBot, HelpDesk. We strongly believe it will increase the marketing potential of the Group.” Two years ago, the company purchased the ChatBot.com and HelpDesk.com domain names for its other products, so acquiring its brand match domain name makes even more sense.
LiveChat CMO Szymon Klimczak, CMO shared more insight with me regarding the acquisition of LiveChat.com and why the company felt the need to buy this domain name:
“We’ve been trying to acquire the domain for many years, basically since establishing LiveChat back in 2002! Over that time we have managed to grow livechatinc.com to the point where traffic-wise it was listed as 306th domain in the entire internet (source: Ahrefs, https://lnkd.in/eKMG8Wa). One might question if the right domain is really needed for the online business to succeed? We’ve lost thousands of customers, but we still managed to grow LiveChat’s customer base from 0 to over 28,000 businesses from 150+ countries. That makes us repeat the same question – is the domain really crucial? We’ve always felt like this important piece was missing. Writing down email address @livechatinc.com just didn’t feel right. We needed a statement. A proof of us going all in. And now, when we just got it, we are super excited about the future! All the pieces are finally in place!”
LiveChat is a publicly traded company on the Warsaw Stock Exchange (WSE ticker symbol LVC). The company has a market cap. of zł1.05B, which I believe is approximately $255 million USD.
Thank you to Jen Sale, COO of Evergreen.com, for sharing the news with me.
I would like to better understand why they tried to trademark “livechat.com” in 2014 when they didn’t even own the domain back then:
https://verimark.com/trademark/livechat-com/86302086
Good question.
I appreciate all of your insightful comments lately.