Color Dot Com Sites

Many brands are built on color as well as design, (the red in Coca-Cola lettering, the purple of a Cadbury chocolate bar wrapper, McDonalds “Golden Arches” and more recently countless companies like FedEx and BP introducing the color green into their logos attempting to imply a “green” (environmentally conscious) aspect to their corporate identity.

So, when I saw that a mattress company had the domain PURPLE.COM, I did some research to see what might have have been hosted on that domain name before it was used to sell mattresses.

It seems the domain name is somewhat famous in internet lore. The original PURPLE.COM website was launched August 31, 1994 by software engineer Jeff Abrahamson. It consisted of a single “blank” page with a solid “purple” background.

The shade of purple was the RGB hexadecimal value #DD00FF.

[illustration] - PURPLE.COM original home page background color hexidecimal RGB value #DD00FF changed to #7D26CD
PURPLE.COM original home page background color hexidecimal RGB value #DD00FF changed to #7D26CD

When visitors complained that #DD00FF wasn’t really purple he changed it to #7D26CD.

The site hosted Abrahamson’s personal and business related web projects until he sold the domain name for approximately $900,000 USD in 2017. The domain is now home to Purple Comfort, a mattress company.

Wondering what’s on other color-dot-com websites?

I surfed all the color-dot-coms of the rainbow, (RED, ORANGE, YELLOW GREEN BLUE INDIGO and VIOLET), as well as BLACK, WHITE, GREY and a few trendy colors to see if the names were taken, and if they were, how the domains were used.


RED.COM – digital camera company uses red color #A70202 (which is hard to see on on a black background) for hover effect on active links and icons;

RED.COM – home page of RED, maker of “Digital Stills and Motion Camera” like RED KOMODO and RED V-RAPTOR and related products and accessories.

There is very little on the screen to make a mental connection between the color red and the red-dot-com domain.

The closest thing to an intentional use of the color red in the site’s overtly black and white theme is when you hover over a link in the top menu. The link text or icon changes to a dark red shade (#A70202 — which has poor contrast on the dark background ) as shown in screen shot, (link for “V-RAPTOR XL” under “CAMERAS” is hovered but hard to see).


ORANGE.COM logo

ORANGE.COM – Corporate website of French telco company Orange S.A. which provides fixed and mobile telephone and data networking and digital services relate to finance, business IT support, cybersecurity, content, e-health and energy.

The company uses the word “orange” in lower case letters on a #FF6600 RGB/hex rectangular background as it’s logo.


YELLOW.COM – digital asset trading site uses small yellow (#FCD000) square in logo.

YELLOW.COM – is home to a platform which “allows users to list, create or trade any digital asset” and also claims to use fully compliant KYC / AML (“Know Your Customer” / “Anti-Money Laundering”) technology.

The site’s logo is predominantly black and white with a small yellow (#FCD000) square in the center of the letter “o”.


BLUE.COM – no content, whois shows domain registration for entity in the UK by Israeli “Domain The Net Technologies Ltd.”. Name has been registered since 1996 and expires Nov. 29th, 2023.


GREEN.COM – displays no content. A search of whois shows the domain name is registered at MarkMonitor Inc. and has been registered since 1999 and expires May 20th, 2023.


INDIGO.COM – domain forwards to indigo.ca, “Canada’s Largest Bookstore”. There doesn’t appear to be any use of the color INDIGO, (#4B0082) on the site.


VIOLET.COM – domain is for sale through eNaming LLC.


BLACK.COM logo.

BLACK.COM – is owned black:crypto GmbH an Austrian company which describes itself as a “virtual asset service provider, trading of goods and IT-services“.

The BLACK that’s used extensively in the theme of the site is not truly black (#000000), it’s very, very dark grey #161616.


WHITE.COM – currently for sale at brandforce.com


GREY.COM logo.

GREY.COM – home to Grey Advertising, agency behind a Time Magazine Invention of the Year, (Grey helped engineer a razor specifically designed to improve “assisted shaving” for caregivers, the Gillette Treo razor), and; “318,000 Flavours, Because You Can” a Pringle’s chip “flavor stacking” combinations social media / ad campaign, and; a United Nations campaign “This is the People’s Message” to name a few. More than just typical advertising, communications, design work — Grey offers ideas and produces “Famously Effective” work for national and international clients.


AQUA.COM – (redirects to https://aqua.co.id/ ), website for an Indonesian company, Danone-AQUA WHICH claims “is the most sold bottled water in the world”.


PINK.COM – ( redirects to https://www.victoriassecret.com/us/pink ), web pages for Victoria’s Secret “PINK” product line.


MAGENTA.COM – ( redirects to https://www.lovemagenta.com/de/magenta/ ), website for “LOVE MAGENTA” sustainable fashions and products.


BEIGE.COM – domain is for sale by Hilco Digital Assets.

###

This article last updated November 11, 2022.

Do you know about any interesting color-dot-com websites? Leave a comment below.