A Domain Name is used for two parts in your business: -
1) Email – (more below)
2) Your web site address
You can register or renew your own domain name here or we can do that for you and invoice you annually.
If this is a new domain name we do offer to set you up with an “Online Business Card” to help promote your business and also set up emails so that you can use your new domain name for your emails – this looks very professional and is separate from the fee above…
Currently we offer the following domain name extensions to register:-
.nz
co.nz
.net.nz
.org.nz
.gen.nz
.ac.nz
.geek.nz
.school.nz
.maori.nz
.co
.com
.net
.org
.biz
.info
.tv
.co.uk
.us
A good domain name:
- Incorporates a keyword - or even better the "where" your service area is - and the "what" your service is.
Eg:- GisbornePlumbing.nz is better that XYZPlumbers.co.nz as folks not knowing your companies name has a need of the service you provide.
–Is as short as possible
–Protects a Trade Mark or brand name
–Protects your name in the areas that you are doing business or are based
–Is easily "spoken"
–can contain capial letters to make any multiple words clearer
Eg:- PenIsland.com sells pens - without caps it's penisland.com - spot the phallus...?
–is obvious to the viewer
.co.nz is perceived to be the first choice for a NZ based business and .com for an internationally focussed business.
The “best” is actually to try for both – as more than one domain name can point to the same web site.
If you gain advantage to be associated with NZ (Eg. as a tourism entity leveraging the “clean green NZ” thing) then a .co.nz can help reinforce the sales message because people are looking specifically for you in NZ.
If you are an international brand (or one with aspirations to become one…) then an international domain name such as .com or .biz may work better.
Having multiple domain names is a good thing to protect your company name, brands and key products or services.
Having more then one domain name can help in other marketing efforts to make it easy for interested customers to have a separate landing page for their specific interest.
Promote your domain name everywhere – signage, adverts, letterheads, business cards, email signature file, voice message and through your professional associations (Chamber of Commerce etc)
Practise “speaking” your domain name and ensure all of your staff can also speak it clearly and comfortably. Remember when speaking your domain name - you don't need to say the "www" or "dub dub dub" bit - all modern browsers will add that - or some modern web sites don't need that anyways.
Email: -
Once you have your own domain name you can use that instead of the ISP’s domain name
This is ideal because: -
·it looks more professional
·it promotes your own “brand”
·you can use it for email – and then change the email alias (see below) to a different Internet Service Provider easily
A “wildcard” can be set up – so “anything” @ domain-name - will come through to you – although we do sometimes avoid this because of spam returns
Email addresses for your business can be generic or specific: -
Generic can be to the role of person in business E.g. sales@domain-name, admin@domain-name or accounts@domain-name
Specific can be name based E.g. – firstname@domain-name or firstname.lastname@domain-name
Using Generic email addresses is good if you have a high staff turnover – or several staff doing the task – such as a team of sales people
If you use Specific email addresses try and standardise so people can guess at the email address of all staff
You can use both of course – and a single email address can go to several staff members
Most email programs also allow you to have several “From” email addresses set up so that when sending emails you choose the “from” address to use for that particular email
This is great to separate your roles in life - parent of your kids with a home email address and running your own company or being empoyed by another compnay - but using the same email program for both.
We also create email stationary and email templates that reflect your web site branding and to ensure that all of your branding look consistent.
Posted: Thu 30 Jul 2020
