Netallianz Web Design

Just think of all those power brands like Coca Cola, McDonalds or Nike. Likewise, your Internet domain name is also your brand. In the Internet, power brands include Yahoo, Google, Amazon and eBay all of which generate huge traffic and revenue.

The first step towards e-commerce is selecting the name of your website. Your domain name tells people who you are and how to find you on the Internet. And because no two parties can have the same web address, your online identity is totally unique. Here are a couple of tips on domain name selection:

1. Own your domain name: It takes a lot of work and determination to build a successful online business, and if you don’t own your domain name, then someone else may end up reaping all the benefits of your hard work. It’s just not worth the risk! If you are thinking of e-commerce, do not use a free domain or a virtual domain. Many portal sites (eg Yahoo, Tripod, Geocities) provide free domains. Free domains do not belong to you and can be taken away at any time.

2. Keep it short if possible: The best domain names are those that customers can remember and type into their browsers after seeing or hearing them only once, so complicated strings of words like “onlinecdstore.com” are not quite as memorable as a simple phrase “cdnow.com”. There are however exceptions to this rule as we see below.

3. Describe your business: For example, “Flowers.com” works perfectly for a florist. And if you are setting up an online presence for an established business, keep the name of your site the same as the name of your business.

4. Make it memorable: “Amazon.com” is much catchier than “booksonline.com”. If you can make your domain name catchy it will help people to remember it. Notice that names like Yahoo, Ebay and Overture don’t really describe what these companies do but they are catchy so people remember them.

5. Do we go for .com or .com.my? Basically .com is cheaper to register and shorter to type in. Therefore it is generally the preferred variation. It is also easier to administer a .com name if you ever need to move your web hosting or change your contact details.

There are other advantages in .com domain instead of any other variation. Even though it’s harder to find a good .com domain name, its still the one people go to first! Suppose you really wanted “widget.com” but it was already taken so you registered “widget.net” instead. Here’s what will happen. After a lot of hard work, you eventually start getting quite a bit following online. People start to remember your domain name but some will forget that it was widget.net and instead end up going to widget.com! Some of your customers will end up going to widget.com by mistake at some point and start buying from that site instead.

6. My .com name has been taken: Well, there’s not much you can do here. Some services can help you grab .com names when they expire but there are no guarantees. You can try other variations such as .com.my or .info.

Exception to Tip 2: Long domain names can be used for search engine positioning. If at all possible use your keywords in your domain name. Your keywords are the words that people would type into a search engine to find you. Many search engines give a higher ranking to a site that has keywords in the domain name when those words are searched for.