Posted on 11 February 2022

Do I need to add WWW to my domain name in an email signature?

As we look around at domain names in print online or in email signatures, we can see that some are shown with www and some without. So why is this and which is correct?

It’s actually not necessary to use WWW in URLs

Used to exist for the purpose of identifying a web address, but this is now obsolete because people understand what a domain name is.

So, why is WWW used so frequently? The use of WWW has been around since the start of the internet, and its continued widespread use as a subdomain has caught on by accident.

The first web server was nxoc01.cern.ch. When publishing the website, the creators fully intended for info.cern.ch to be their home page, and WWW, as such, was excluded. The Domain Name System (DNS) records for the server were never switched, and the use of WWW became an unintentional standard practice.

Major brands never use WWW when displaying their domain name in print. It makes it harder to read and harder to remember.

There is a whole website dedicated to dropping www

https://dropwww.com/why

Shorter is better

The purpose of listing a company’s URL / domain name in print or other branding, to encourage the viewer to remember the address to visit it later. And for this reason shorter URL / domain names have been preferred as this is easier to remember memorable.

Removing WWW domain name has no bearing on the SEO. 

WWW in email signatures

Any company’s URL in an email signature has two purposes; one should be for the viewer to identify, recognise and remember the domain name, but of course they should be clickable, to lead you through for the recipient to view the Companies website. Neither of these purposes require listing the URL with WWW.

For many years marketeers or project managers and others have, in their ignorance, told designers and developers to continue add www to domain names.

Most people recognise that a .com or co.uk at the end is a domain name (as for the new suffixes I cover that below)

Another ’w‘ is a major crime

Worse still you see this in email signatures:

W www.mirosign.com

or with a colon

W: www.mirosign.com

it can get worse

web: www.mirosign.com

Not only is the WWW superfluous, the email signature designer has rammed it home by reinforcing that it’s definitely a domain name, by pre-fixing it with yet another fourth W!

this is usually combined with the labelling of telephone numbers and email addresses such as this:

E: jo.smith@mirosign.com

Just in case you were unsure what an email address looks like.

WWW in the mirosign app

The mirosign app automatically deletes www on any listing of domain names to make your email signature look as best it can. We also remove http:// but of course this will remain on the link as this is necessary to send you to the website.