With nearly a thousand registered dot brand domain names, .LECLERC provides a wide range of valuable use cases for companies considering an application in the second round of new gTLDs. In particular, its dot brand enabled the French supermarket chain, E.Leclerc, to react rapidly and effectively during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Initiative: Suite of store-specific websites, migration of the main company website
Models of use: Full migration, marketing, products and services
Key benefits: Ease of scaling domain registrations, shift to online sales, consumer trust, payment security, control of branding
Download Use Case PDFWith an annual revenue of over $50 billion and upwards of 130,000 employees, supermarket cooperative E.Leclerc is one of the largest retail companies in France and the market leader for groceries. In acquiring .LECLERC, one of the major benefits from a branding perspective was the opportunity to create a corporate domain name which exactly matched the E.Leclerc brand. The company quickly migrated its online home to the E.LECLERC domain name, which now hosts its French online shopping site and is the foundation of its online strategy.
"E.leclerc's use of its dot brand is an example of how a company can expand its business and online presence by providing valuable services its customers appreciate."
At the start of 2021 E.leclerc took a major step forward with its dot brand when it created approximately 600 .LECLERC domains, each one referring to a physical store from its vast regional network. Websites were rolled out on each domain, providing local store information, services, and the option to click-and-collect orders along with home delivery options. This kind of local information was particularly helpful at a time when leaving the house was strictly controlled, and helped E.leclerc to mitigate the drop in customers seen by its traditional hypermarkets during the lockdown, when customers sought smaller local stores.
E.Leclerc has also used its dot brand to centralise how it communicates corporate information and strategic initiatives, with dedicated sites for its corporate social responsibility initiatives (MOUVEMENT.LECLERC), its award programme (TROPHEES-INNOVATION.LECLERC), its career development (RECRUTMENT.LECLERC), and its corporate history (HISTOIREETARCHIVES.LECLERC).
There are also new redirects to facilitate access to key projects, such as COVID-19 health measures via MESURES-SANITAIRES.LECLERC, and environmental initiatives such as plastic bag reduction/recycling via REDUISONSLEPLASTIQUE.LECLERC.
