Advice about choosing a domain name

Sunday, 10 April 2011 10:20 Written by Michael Egerton

Choosing domain names, or web addresses is a major thing when you want to do business online. Whilst a great, or even halfway decent domain name may not guarantee success, it can most definitely have an impact on just about all aspects of your online business. So how can a business choose a great domain name?  Here are our top tips.

When choosing a domain name, your best bet is to get one that is short, concise and easy to remember, as this will minimise confusion. If you are going for a domain that could possibly cause a bit of confusion, then it’s generally it falls into one of these categories: words that sound similar, common misspellings, hyphenated or non-hyphenated variations.

Generally domain names with less than three syllables are best.  However, long domain names offer more flexibility in choosing a domain name, allowing you to be more descriptive about what your site is about or what it does.  this could be an advantage for SEO purposes.

Don’t choose domain names like stuff4free.com or free-stuff-online though, as it makes it hard for the domain to be passed on to others through word of mouth. People can’t actually "hear" whether it’s 4 or four, and they can’t "hear" the hyphens.

Just like complicated email addresses, joe_bloggs.com looks ok, but try telling someone to go there, joe underscore bloggs dot com is just hard to say.  you might have customers from another part of the world that might not speak English as well as you do, so choose a domain name that is easy to get right.  Short domain names are generally better than long, just for convenience sake.  I'm sure that you will have to enter your email address or domain name many times in the future so the shorter the better.

I’m not a fan of dots, dashes and numbers in a domain name, I think I prefer them as letters all in a row, like stuffforfree.com, freestuffonline.com and joebloggs.com (or whatever else the extension may be).

Try testing out names on family and friends, together you could come up with a really great name, one you wouldn’t have thought up on your own, and with a bit of luck it may not have been taken already.

Once you have your domain name you need to think about the top level domain eg .com, .co.uk or .net etc.  From experience I must say that if you can't get the .com it's better to choose another domain name.  Some people even go as far as to buy other domain names to prevent against copycats that might try to clone your business.  At the same time be aware of internet registration companies that try to sell you other top level domains by claiming that another company wants to buy them too.

All Mile High Media websites include a free .com domain name and our brand management experts can advise you on your choice.

Blog - Web-design

Websites for new businesses

Sunday, 10 April 2011 09:45 Written by Administrator
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Congratulations you have a new business! Now you need a website to get more customers.  Here are our top tips for new UK businesses about websites and what your website should and shouldn't do.

Get a professional website. Don't be cheap!  Of course you could get a free site at first, just to experiment. But people might not take you seriously if you have a website hosted for free and covered with banner ads.  Owning your own domain name adds credibility to your site, and Mile High Media can help you buy a domain name at a bargain price, so do that as soon as you feel ready.

Get a really fast-loading website from which to sell your products. You don’t have long to catch a potential customers interest, so choose a website that is fast loading and interesting. All Mile High Media websites are designed to be fast, search engine friendly and powerful.

Don’t fill the webpages with a ton of waffle. Give the most important information. What can the person get from using the product or service? Why is the product exactly what the person needs? What is the price etc? Give people a way to pay immediately, in case they REALLY like what they see, there and then.

If you have a LOT of information, give them a link to a "more info" page, perhaps with photos and payment options. Get an autoresponder where people can sign up for your Email Newsletters for notices on future products. Give them an incentive in exchange for their name and email address.

Build your contact list honestly! No "leads" buy from uncertain sources, so don't "harvesting" email addresses, or bug friends and family to sign up. Once you have built up a list of subscribers you need to keep in touch with your contacts regularly.

Why not send your contacts an email asking for a little more information? Maybe a poll on what type of things they’re most interested in? If you know what your contacts are looking for, then you have something to work with. You can find whatever they need, test it out, and when you’re happy with it, say "Hey, I found something I think you may like!"

Narrow your focus. Don’t try to be "everything" to "everyone", you’ll just end up spreading yourself out way too thin. Find what works for you, what excites you, and work from there. Yes, I said "excites". We all need a bit of excitement in life, right? So why not work with something you’re excited about? If and when it stops working for you, drop it and move on.

Improve your website's usability. The ease with which visitors are able to use a Web site is very important,especially if you’re trying to market something from the site. Usability is very much about how quickly and easily visitors are able to move around the site and not just about making sure everything on the site works.

The need for your website to be easily navigated is enormous. Messy, disruptive and confusing sites are a huge turn off to potential customers. In other words: if you’re looking to make sales, make sure your website is easy to navigate so as not to chase off visitors at first sight. Navigation (links for moving around the site)is extremely important if you want your visitors to look at more than just your main page. If navigation choices are unclear, most visitors will just hit the "Close" button, never to be seen again.

As a rule of thumb, the main navigation is usually placed in the top 1/3 of the web page or on the left hand column, and the secondary navigation tends to be placed within the bottom 2/3 of the page, or on the right hand column. Of course, this is entirely your choice, because, as with all rules, there ARE exceptions ;~)

Build a website yourself or hire a professional webdesign team? If you want to build your website on your own from scratch, I highly recommend getting some free webspace and installing a CMS like Joomla or Wordpress.  Web-design is actually quite easy, but getting the website just right can take a lot of time.  In a new business you can't afford to waste time messing around fixing bugs when you could be better off getting a proper website built right the first time. Also be careful of hidden costs like web-hosting, templates, customisation, graphic design, analytics and ongoing SEO work.  There's quite a lot of extra work involved in running a website. Also keep in mind that to be taken seriously, you really will need to get your own domain and proper hosting for your site at some point in time.

For more information about powerful websites for small and medium size businesses please visit http://milehighmedia.co.uk.

Blog - Web-design