Small actions can have a huge impact on how customers see your brand. Something as simple as a hand-written note or learning someone’s name and a few phrases in their native tongue makes all the difference. You can translate this sense of genuine interest in your customer’s culture and needs into the digital world in the form of an IDN domain name.

What is an IDN?

IDNs (Internationalized Domain Names) are domain names that are created in the local language of the internet user such as Arabic, Chinese, Cyrillic, Hindi, Russian, Serbian, Tamil, Thai, Ukrainian, Hebrew, Japanese, and Korean, instead of Latin characters only. Any domain name that contains characters that are not found in the English-based alphanumeric system (English letters, and numbers such as 1, 2, or 3) is considered to be an IDN.

What is Unicode?

Unicode are a sequence of characters that display in a native format.

What is Punycode? 

Punycode is an algorithm that turns Latin-based characters such as á, é, í, ä, ö, etc. into an ASCII string. Punycode always starts with “XN–” and looks a little something like “XN–545A6G”. Some older software and email services may not be able to recognize the Unicode/native language and will need to use the Punycode instead.

We have an IDN Punycode Converter tool which can convert Unicode to ASCII or vice versus if you ever find yourself in need.

Registering an IDN domain name helps you connect with your target audience in their local language and provide a more comfortable online experience with your company’s website for users whose native language is not English. This enables your visitors to navigate your website and address emails to you in their local language. Customers want to know they are more than another dollar in the bank or number on a spreadsheet. IDNs are the perfect way to make your customers feel comfortable and appreciated!

How to register an IDN domain

You can browse through the extensive list of IDN domains we offer here and filter your search with the 27 languages we feature. Let’s say we have a significant number of Russian clients based in Moscow and want to register a Russian IDN domain. Depending on the domain extension, you can register the domain in whole or in part in Russian. When searching for you perfect name you can use the language translation tool to translate words or phrases into the desired language. 

We have a cute office tradition of wishing Elena our Special Projects Coordinator and Anna our Domain Service Specialist goodbye in Russian when they leave for the day, and every day it never fails to put a smile on their faces. Imagine how amazing your customers would feel if you could bring evoke this emotion online and in how they interact with your brand- game changer! Small implementations like these are what turn your brand into a family and your customers into brand advocates.