As an entrepreneur/business person, I don't have to tell you that
your company's image is of critical importance to your bottom
line. Decisions such as company name, logo, office location, etc.
all play a part in the way your customers/clients perceive you,
find you, and ultimately decide to do business with you.
Consider this. When you first saw the address DomainNameAdvisor.com,
did you have any doubts about what you expected to find there? If we
had chosen the much shorter DNA.com, would that have affected your
thinking the same way? Or what about SobelConsulting.com? Does that
spark the same interest and expectations? I'm sure you agree that
it doesn't.
So you can see that the selection of my domain name plays an
important role in communicating to you, a potential client, the
substance and relevance of what we do and why you chose to come
see us.
What makes your choice of domain name different than the business
decisions you have always made in the past? The difference is that
it combines a number of factors that have always been separate in
the past, with some new elements that you are quite possibly not
familiar with.
In the non-cyber world, an address is not usually associated with
a particular type of business, with a few exceptions such as
Rodeo Drive for upscale retail or Wall Street for finance. Otherwise,
it is common for many types of professionals to be on the same
street, or even in the same building, as a restaurant, barber
shop, or bank. So it's clear that by just telling someone your
business address they are not likely to guess the nature of
your business.
Why is this important? Because in the real world there are
established, relatively simple methods commonly used by people
who seek you out. Telephone books, including yellow page ads,
411 operators, referrals, and for retailers it can be as simple
as driving home from work and seeing your establishment.
Since those methods don't translate well to the internet, how
do people find you? Maybe, if you are listed high enough under
the right keywords, you might be found. The question is, who do you
want to find you? Only the people who are specifically looking for
your company, or every person who is looking for your product or
service, whether they know you exist or not?
Remember our discussion above about the choice of DomainNameAdvisor.com
vs. SobelConsulting.com? For a more in depth examination of this
issue, read "Entity identification or intuitive
search?" For many businesses, this issue is so critical that it
can make the difference between just existing in cyberspace and
generating incredible abounts of new business.
A peripheral benefit is that you can use your domain name as
part of your email address. With a memorable domain name you
also get a memorable email address. This can be very valuable
if your existing email address is complicated or hard to remember.
Another issue here is the selection of T.L.D., and whether you
should register in one particular category or several. This is a
decision that is very case specific, so I will not get into it
here except to say that most of you should start with a dot com.
Additional T.L.D.'s will depend on your specific circumstances.
"Domain Name WARNING!"