No matter your business, big or small, online or offline, it’s safe to say that there are clear benefits to having a domain name. In fact, they are still sold in their thousands on a daily basis, worldwide. Nevertheless, we know how hard it can be to understand exactly why you might need one when you’re just starting out.
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What are the benefits of a domain name?
There are so many websites in the world already, does having a custom domain name still make a difference? On a basic level, domain names affect how easily your potential customers can find you on search engines, and what a visitor’s first impression of your service will be. The short answer, then, is yes: domain names are important.
What are the tangible benefits to having a domain name?
Domain names can benefit your business by helping you to:
- Reach your target market
- Maintain brand ownership
- Be memorable (get found easily by customers)
- Build an online presence
- Set expectations
- Develop credibility
- Boost your SEO
- Compete with other businesses
- Grow and expand
At UENI, having built over 625,000 websites for small business owners worldwide, we’d like to think that we’ve learned a great deal about how websites work. As such, we can advise on some of the most common questions we’ve heard about domains over the years, as well as explain what separates the great domains from the less-than-stellar.
Benefits of Domain Names: For the Business
Connect with your market
A bespoke, high quality domain name name enables you to speak directly to your specific corner of the market by setting more precise expectations regarding what your business has to offer. This saves you – and your customers – time and enables you to connect with them clearly and quickly.
Control your brand
If you don’t secure your preferred business domain name, you run the risk of somebody else purchasing it and losing control of your brand. Even if you’re not sure you’ll want to use it, buying a domain name for your business benefits you by ensuring that no one else can secure your name and potentially siphon you customers (or even maliciously damage your reputation). For example, if you’re the proprietor of Holly’s Handbags, you’ll want to have a domain as similar to Hollyshandbags.com as possible.
Be remembered and get found online
A domain name helps you stand out and be memorable. Having a site with a ‘.blog’ before your name doesn’t exactly help customers find you in a quick search and makes it hard to remember your business’s URL. Buying a domain name can help you solve this problem and ensure your clients remember you and can find you whenever they need.
Online presence: Identity and branding
Your site’s name allows you to communicate something to your visitor about what your services are and what your core message is. Used correctly, a name can contribute to your overall reputation and branding – and we all know that a good reputation means more customers and sales. A good domain name basically helps you set up a vision for your business’s identity, and secure better online visibility.
Add a layer of credibility and professionalism to your business
Having a personal domain name is a good sign that your company is trustworthy, and should be taken seriously.
Increase your site’s SEO
This is all about how your website appears to (and on) search engines. Having a relevant domain name that directly links to your service or product and the words people commonly use to search for these is sure to impact on your website’s ranking.
Of course, there are a myriad of factors that can affect how a site ranks on search engines like Google. That said, a good domain name can definitely bolster your site’s ranking on search engines and help drive more traffic to it.
Develop a competitive edge
A personal domain name puts you on a more even playing field in comparison to big companies, helping you compete alongside every one of your competitors – even if they’re much bigger.
To put it bluntly, every well-known business has an independent domain name these days. As such, a unique domain name is just part of the process of starting a business in 2022. It can form a big part of your growth, and might even be the first step to your business’s long success.
Benefits of Domain Names: For the Consumer
You may be wondering: what are the benefits of an independent domain name from the consumer’s perspective? When it comes to the consumer, the advantages of having a domain name largely boil down to expectations and finding the relevant services quickly.
They know what to expect
For a potential customer, an accurate domain name is how it helps you to understand the kind of business you’re dealing with and what to expect from it. For instance, if you spotted a website called ‘onlyorchids.com’, but you were actually looking to buy a bouquet of roses for your mother, you’d immediately know from the domain name that the flowers on offer from this business weren’t for you.
Save time
Domain names help weed out irrelevant results on a search engine, helping potential customers find the exact services they’re looking for more quickly and cutting down on unnecessary searching time. The end result? Consumers are able to get a better sense of all the relevant businesses offering a particular service through a quick search.
All in all, the benefits of domain names for your consumers can’t be overlooked. Whilst your site’s name only represents one part of creating a business, domain names do play a role in helping consumers connect to the services they’re looking for quickly and with ease. They set expectations, helping consumers identify exactly what a business is offering and whether it is for them.
How to choose a domain that really benefits your business
If you’ve kept up with us so far, you might be asking yourself, “Well, how do I make sure to choose a good domain name?”
Without choosing a good one, you’ll miss out on the crucial benefits of having a domain name in the first place. Briefly, there are a few things to keep in mind when selecting your business’s domain name.
For length, think short!
Without choosing a good one, you’ll miss out on the crucial benefits of having a domain name in the first place. Briefly, there are a few things to keep in mind when selecting your business’s domain name.
The key is to keep it short, memorable and unlikely to get misspelled. If your domain name is overly long and difficult to spell, you’ll just be making it harder for your customers to come to you – and we don’t want that!
Actively target your audience
When it comes to selecting a domain name that best benefits your business, it’s vital to think about relevance, i.e. what your audience will be looking for. Don’t forget to consider what customers might type into searches to find services like yours and what this tells you about creating a name.
If you look closely, you’ll find that the most visited sites worldwide tend to have an average of 9 characters in their domain name. Hence, keeping it simple and direct is the idea. Our best advice; don’t rush the process. Try to create a name that adds credibility to your business, but don’t get too bogged down in the process.
Benefits of domain names FAQ
What does buying a domain name mean?
In essence, a domain is an address on the internet. Domain names are basically used to assign a name to long numeric IP address, meaning that of us can actually use the internet without getting completely lost. When it comes to purchasing a domain name, these are bought from a domain registrar. Think of buying a domain almost like paying rent – you’ll have to pay a yearly fee in order to retain ownership of the domain.
What are some good domain names?
Good domain names should usually be both short and relevant, whilst potentially helping you pick up some walk-in business. You’ll also want a name that doesn’t sound so generic that it blends into the background. Like any other sort of branding, it needs to roll off the tongue, yet tell you something about the product on offer.
Let’s reuse the online handbag shop, for instance. ‘HappyHandbags’ or ‘HollysHandbags’ is almost always better than ‘HollySmithsPrettyHandbags’. Wouldn’t you agree?
Is buying a domain worth it?
In general, there are more benefits to buying a domain name than there are negatives. Think of a domain name as a kind of investment – it’s good to have one as you don’t know if you’ll need it later on.
The domain-selling business is a lucrative one. If you don’t secure your preferred domain name for your business now, it might be gone by the time you change your mind. As domain names are paid yearly, why not get one? You always have the chance to cancel later, if you find you no longer need one.
Finally, as we’ve shown above, domain names can only help boost your business by increasing your online visibility and giving your services a sense of professionalism.
Whilst there’s no guarantee that a domain name will make your business world-known, it’s clear that they can only help you secure more customers. All in all, we’d say – worth it!
If you currently have a UENI account but do not have a domain, you can get one by upgrading to one of our plans.
