In this digital age, your companys web site is your electronic business card. A strong domain name is the key to your Internet presence. It should be recognizable and relate to your business name, brand, product, and/or activities. Make sure it fits on a business card and is easy to remember whether seen in print or mentioned over the phone.
Use the name people know you by. Dont abbreviate, unless the abbreviation is your companys trademark. Ask your co-workers, your customers, your friends, and your family what domain name theyd expect your company to have.
Dont forget to include your domain name in your sites logo. And put your domain name on all company promotional materials such as business cards and stationary.
Length Matters
Conventional wisdom states that a good domain name is easy for customers to remember, easy to spell, and short. That said, its increasingly difficult to secure short domain names among top level domain names such as .com, .net and ,org. In these cases (and you have 67 characters to choose from), its preferable to choose a meaningful statement such as Lawreferralservice.com or Hotelreservationservice.com, rather than lrs.com or hrs.com Give a Good Impression
We all know that first impressions can be crucial, so choose your domain name carefully. Domain names often come without spaces, so pay careful attention to the total package. For example, PatternsExchange can look like patternsexchange.
Select Alternate Names
If your first domain name choice is not available, you can check the whois information box for the domain name, contact the person listed, and see if theyre willing to sell it. If they want to sell, they will likely charge more than the $24.95 registration fee. An easier alternative is to register a variation of your first choice.
For example, if your company name is Mrs Smiths Cookies, but mrssmithscookies.com and the more obvious cookies.com are registered, try adding a small letter such as e to indicate that its an online business. Or add the word online. Or add your location to attract local customers:
ecookies.com
Cookiesonline.com
CookiesNewYork.com
Alternatively, try registering a local domain name:
mrsmithscookies.ca
mrsmithscookies.us
Use a little creativity, and you may find your alternative beats your original choice.
Once youve got a list of alternatives for your online business, test them with your friends and colleagues to see which ones they like best. Make sure these names can be easily pronounced and spelled by your test audience. Then, rank them in order of popularity.
Consider Spelling Mistakes
Consider mistakes people will make when typing your web site address and how your domain name sounds when you have to read it over the phone to a customer. Explaining special characters, abbreviations, and spelling is awkward and doesnt make good business sense. Will customers accidentally make spelling mistakes Will they use the plural form of a word instead of the singular form, or visa versa Make a list of possible mistakes, and register additional domain names that incorporate these mistakes.
Register Multiple Versions of Your Name
Register all possible domain name variations related to your company name. If your companys name is hard to spell, register common misspellings. Register every domain people might use to find your company. It only costs $24.95 a year to register each domain name, and thats a small expense to keep a customer.
Take this example: Before America Online acquired Time Warner for $178 billion, it registered at least 21 domain names that might be useful to the new company, named AOL Time Warner, from AOLTW.com to AmericaOnlineTimeWarner.com. Alternatively, web sites exist that capitalize on misspellings using them as advertising vehicles and diverting customers from your site.
Register Product Names
When users search the Internet for a particular product or service they often search by product or service, rather than business name. To increase the chances of having your site found, register extra domain names that relate to your core business or products. If you owned the hypothetical company name of Widgets & Widgets co. but you sold an array of household products, you could register generic domain names relating to all aspects of household goods. You may be too late to snap up obvious domain names such as detergent.com or vacuum.com, but a little creative thinking into alternatives can be lucrative. These alternative domains can be easily linked to your main web site.
Avoid Trademarked Names
Ensure someone else has not trademarked the name you register. You cannot register names already registered as copyright (for example, McDonalds). Like company names, domain names are unique and cannot be duplicated. Avoid registering domain names that are similar to your competition or to famous trademarks. Businesses have lost their rights to registered domain names due to conflicts with existing trademarks for off-line companies.
Register Locally
If your company is located in Canada, you can register a .ca domain name even if your business activity includes export trade. If you have an international presence, a top-level domain such as .com, .net , or .org is more suitable. Many businesses choose to register all three, and we suggest doing so. All three addresses can point to the same e-mail account and web site.
Conversely, you might open a virtual office in another country. For example, bread.com could also register bread.ca, which may point towards the same site, attracting a larger audience. Dont forget to check to see if a local presence is required in the country you wish to register.
Use a metaphor
If your .dot com businesses does not have a name, the world is your oyster. One Internet incubation company decided on the metaphor campsix, referring to the final basecamp on the Everest climb rather than a straight description of services. The name reflected the difficulty and challenges of building an Internet company to the scaling of Everest. Bear in mind that if your web site is the primary tool for business, the company name must be the company URL.
Shaun Cronrath is the President & CEO of DomainPurpose.com, a domain name registration company offering all the major domain extensions --.com, .net, .org, .info, .biz, .name, .ca, .us, .cn, .eu, .de, .pro and more.
If you are looking for making some extra money, you should look into the domain names field as reselling domain names can be a very good opportunity for improving for financial status. But under one condition: to plan your every step very well.
Nowadays, domain names registrars are everywhere. This is a good thing are more domain names registrars bring better services and stronger competition, but it also means lower domain name fees. And lower domain prices represent an easy way of getting into this business.
So, if you are already involved into an Internet-based business, you have to sell domain names too. Why Because everyone is doing it: Web design firms, hosting companies and programming companies also sell domain names or domain name management services in order to improve their business offer.
But before jumping to this business opportunity, you should first be aware of the fact that the most important thing to do is to choose a domain name registrar. And if you want to be guaranteed with success, than you should decide on a registrar which has been approved by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). The reason is simple: these companies have been legally authorized to create and sell domain names on a direct way basis. Otherwise, you would be reselling the domain names of another reseller, which means a more expensive registration process and a very unpleasant step back for your business.
And even after your have decided on a domain name registrar, there are some aspect that you should take into consideration.The first one regards volume discounts. You can make a lot of profit if you jump into the volume-based registration services opportunity but only if you have a very strong pricing and marketing strategy. This is a very profitable aspect of this business as the price for a domain decreases as the volume of sales goes up. But this has a negative side too: resellers have to sell a big amount of domain names before actually making a profit.Another important aspect is advertisement. This domain names reseller business may be inexpensive, but it is a very difficult job if you dont have an active marketing strategy. You have to draw attention to your offer using all the advertisement tricks you can think of.
Upselling has to be taken into consideration too. You have to make sure you are keeping your entire customers close, as this is the trick to have recurring revenue. One method of achieving this is to persuade your customers into securing their domain names for more years instead of paying for them every year. The positive strategy of this move is the fact that you dont have to worry about selling those domain names and you get money every year for sure. And there is also an advantage for the customers: they dont have to renew the domain names every year. They do it once, for a longer period. But this approach comes with a catch: customers arent jumping into this deal because the price is rising as the period of the ownership is longer. If you want to outweigh this downside, keep you multi-year prices low.
Or you can go for the value-added services and partnerships opportunity. You can close partnership deals with other Internet service companies to offer some other services that will bring you more customers. The trick here is to diversify your business offer.
These are only some basic rules you should keep in mind when going into the domain names business. Remember that running a successful business in this field requires strategy, high-quality services and lot of work. And dont forget that creativity will make you look different and more attractive to customers! So be active and creative!
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