Every small business should have a web presence. Here is some practical advice on what you need and how to go about it.
The Small Business Web Toolkit
To establish your presence and identity in the digital world, you need:
- your own domain name;
- one or more email addresses tied to your domain;
- a website (or a blog if you prefer) for your domain with a minimum amount of information about you and your business. You can grow your website to be as big as you want to suit your needs.
Getting your own domain name
Having your own domain is the most essential and basic step for creating your business identity online.
Some marketing 101 here - if you want people to remember your site's name, you'll have to pick a name that they can remember. That means a name that can be associated to you, your product or your service, and something that spells like it sounds (if you don't want to frustrate users trying to find you online).
This can prove to be a more complicated thing than you expect: there are an incredible amount of .com domain names that have already been registered, even if you can't see a website for it on the net. "Parking domains" is a big business that has "domain investors" busy buying up domain names (over 70 million names already registered) they feel may become valuable to someone (you?) down the road and that they hope to sell you back at a hefty profit (some have sold at $100Ks or even $Millions).
The key here is to be flexible - in your creative naming process (don't get stuck on one name, draft a list of several names that you like), in the choice of the top-level domain space you want for yourself (if the .com is taken, can you live with .net or .biz?), or even in agreeing to pay a reasonable premium for a name you want.
Checking domain availability
Here are some tools and sites you can use to help in picking a domain name.
DomainsBot.com - a search engine dedicated to helping you find or purchase a domain name. Type in the domain name you want, or the words that describe the domain name you seek, and DomainsBot goes out and tells you what is available, looks at alternative spellings, and alternative words that convey a similar idea.
GoDaddy.com - enter the domain name you want and the search tool tells you if it is availabe or not, if that name is available in other top-level domains (.net, .biz, .us, etc), proposes alternative names for your site, gives you status of the name for specific country domains (.fr, .it, .co.uk, etc).
InstantDomainSearch - start typing the domain name you want and the tool proposes alternatives in real time.
Sedo.com - specializes in purchase and sale of domain names already registered. Has over 5 million domain names for sale, has brokerage services to help you acquire a domain name you really want, domain research and appraisal services, etc.
Registering your chosen domain name
Now that you have found the domain name you want, where do you go to register it? There are tons of domain registrars available. Choosing one is a matter of finding the right package of domain management features, from a reputable company, for the right price.
Some guidelines:
- free WhoIsGuard service (private domain registration) to protect your identity as owner of a website. Every registred website has to be associated with a complete name and address in a public WhoIs record (easily searchable by anyone on the net). The WhoIsGuard service replaces your name and address with that of your registrar, who keeps your information private in their records.
- free URL redirection is a must - this allows you to redirect your domain or subdomains to any web page of your choice. This helps if you need to register your domain name with one registrar but host your web page somewhere else (a free or different web host, your own server, etc);
- free email redirection is a must. You may want to manage all your email from a single address, or you may want to have several email identities (fabrice@xyz.com, fabriceh@xyz.com, fabrice.herpain@xyz.com) all pointing to a single email address (fabrice@myisp.com).
- free email address and storage space is highly desireable, if not a must.
- flexible upgrade path to a complete set of web hosting packages is a must. You need to be able to grow your web needs without having to switch providers or pay a fee to transfer your domain to a web host.
- $10/yr for domain registration or less. Some providers still charge $15, $20 or even $30 for a domain when the competition can be as low as $2.99!
Some popular registrars and web hosts:
- 1and1.com (my current host provider, lots of different packages and great pricing);
- DomainZoo.com (one of many dynamic providers out there);
- Active-Domain.com (my provider for personal sites, provides the essentials for cheap);
- GoDaddy.com (giant domain registrar favored by many in the domain real-estate business);
- Yahoo Small Business (cheap first year registration at $2.99 for new customers);
- Microsoft Office Live (new offering from the software giant, you pay a premium for the brand)
Domain real-estate - smart and prudent investing
Your domain name is unique and valuable, and until you invest in search engine optimization (to see your domain move to the top of search engine lists), you must rely on your users remembering your domain name and knowing how to spell your name properly in their browser.
Domain registrars are making it quite economical to reserve multiple domain names that all point to the same web page (or even email address) so that an "approximate" spelling still results in a web page visit or an email received.
If you wanted to use "BestNameIdea.com" as your domain name, you can inexpensively ($5/yr/name) also register "BestNameIdea.net (and .org, .biz, etc), "BestNameIdeas.com", "TheBestNameIdea.com" or even "BestNameId.com".
Think about how users will likely remember your domain name, how they likely will (miss)spell it, and buy those domain names to build up the right internet real estate for your website.