Website designers often encounter business owners who don’t know how to get started with an online presence. To help visitors better understand the process, DuVall Designs in Phoenix AZ, is providing a series of blog posts that deal with the variety of topics new business owners must face. When undertaking new website creation, it is important to consider everything from the domain name and project budget to marketing and potential keyword choices, to workflow, website design, search engine optimization, user experience, and website content that leads to sales conversions. This article is the first in the series and outlines the strategies for choosing an effective domain name with keywords that signal exactly what your business offers.
Choosing a Domain
Before choosing a domain name, you will need to give some thought to how your business will be marketed. While it’s not yet time to develop a marketing plan, this is a good time to think about exactly what you want a new visitor to know about your business. While choosing keywords is an entire topic for a future blog post – first you need to consider the shortest, most effective way to sum up your business offerings. If your company sells shoes, for example, you will want the word “shoes” in your domain name if possible. You will also want to add specifics: sportsshoes.com, tennisshoes.com, and runningshoes.com. This same example could be used for: babyshoes.com, childrensshoes.com, petshoes.com, and alienshoes.com. The key to focus on is this: when it’s time to write the website content, what few words will you use most often to describe your main product?
If your first choice of domain name is not available, then change the words up a little bit: shoesforbabies.com, allsportsshoes.com, besttennisshoes.com. In each case, you are still making a statement about the product that customers can expect to find at your site. Many of the current domain name search tools will suggest alternatives for you, and these suggestions are worth considering. At the very least, the list might spark a great idea. Try to avoid overly long names such as bestshoesmoneycanbuy.com. Unless you have a very large and powerful marketing budget, you will probably not get the buying public to identify that name.
With domain names, straightforward is always the best choice.