Getting your Business Online: In the beginning

Getting your Business Online: In the beginning

Taking your business online is not a decision to be taken lightly. Once you decide on this course of action, you have to take some considered decisions. Are we going to build a website? What type of website are we going to build? What domain name shall we choose for our website?

In this article, assuming that you are going to build a website and you have decided on whether your website will be a brochure website or a transactional website. Then the next decision is what domain name shall we choose for our website and this is going to be the sole focus of this article. For this purpose, the name of the website includes the domain extension at the end of the domain name. Specifically, whether a .com or co.uk.

Domain Name

The name of website as a golden rule must be simple and easy to mention and remember. You will find yourselves having to mention this name to customers in casual conversation. Ideally the name should be easy to pronounce and remember. Typically, it’s the name of the business that ends up as the domain name. However, there may be instances where that is not possible because perhaps the name has already been acquired by another business. Sometimes there are plausible workarounds even this problem. In one case for instance, we navigated this problem by attaching the business postcode at the end of the business name. Which can also be a boost for the SEO efficiency of the website. (SEO will be a subject covered in detail in another article)

The name should ideally be short enough so as to not be too cumbersome to remember or spell. The consequence of which could send your traffic to unintended destinations. If the business name is long and contains more than one word, you may have to even consider abbreviations as an alternative. A classic example of this is www.bbc,com. You can imagine how cumbersome it might have been if they had used the full name.

Next up and a very important part of this consideration is the domain extension. This is the suffix that follows the . dot in a web address

So in the BBC example, the domain extension is .com. In early days of the world wide web, domain extensions were restricted to a handful of extensions such as .com or co.uk or .de depending on the country the business is operating in. Today, a lot more extensions have been added to make it more accessible and curb the activity of domain carpet baggers. So today, you can have access to extensions such as .me. .io. .shop etc etc.

It is worth mentioning the relative merits of these different extensions.

Domain extensions like .com are by far the most valuable of the suite. Often seen as universal in its reach so applies across borders and continents In a way that .co.uk may be perceived to only relate to matters in the UK. None of these extensions restrict access to any specific location but it may have implications on how the search engines read the sites relevance and as a result may not include your site in other markets outside of your primary location that you may be interested in.

So where possible, it is better to aim for universal domain extensions than ones that pertain to specific geo locations. Unless there is a specific reason for the geo preference.

So if you have an online ecommerce store in the UK that sells goods across borders, then its better to seek a universal domain extension than a .co.uk.

Always worth having a discussion about this with your web development team before committing to a domain name. It will have a huge bearing on the reach and efficiency of your website.

For more consultation on this and much more call us on 0203 633 4001