Domain Name Asset: Critical Aspects You Must Not Overlook

Don't Imperil Your Domain And Business By Ignoring These Ownership Issues

Your domain name is vital to your online business and presence and this dictates that you treat your domain name as a major business asset. That requires too that you handle your domain name as a top business issue and take steps to protect its integrity.

What Is Domain Name
The domain name is your web address, that is your address or location on the internet. It is not just what is used in locating your website, which is effectively your business outlet on the internet, it is in fact the website. Your site won't run without a domain name. It's also called the URL (universal resource locator) and is unique to your website. Once properly typed into the web browser address window, your site should be accessed. An example is http://www.acceler8now.com.

Why Is It Vital To Your Business?
The first point is that it's the address to locate you on the web and, unlike a physical location, an intending visitor can't exactly stop to ask direction. If the address is misspelled (even by a dot), forgotten, mistaken, lost or somehow improperly applied, it would hurt your business (the visitor won't find you). So you need to work hard to ensure it consistently does what is intended - bring business to your website.

Also, the domain name becomes your brand identity on the internet and indeed part of your corporate brand image. For reasons of brand acceptance and recall vital to your marketing effort, it needs to be nurtured, and for brand equity protection, you need to guard it jealously. As you will soon find in this article, there are issues of ownership protection that are very important about your domain name.

Choosing A Domain Name - Key Issues
Given the central place of the domain name to your web presence and business, your choice of a name becomes weighty. Here are best practices to guide you:

The name needs to be appropriate and project what you do. If this ties in with the business name, better still. If your company is Jecniks Patson International Limited, an apple seller, www.jecnicksapples.com should, in several respects, be more effective than www.jecnikspatson.com. For one, the former will do better with the search engines since it includes a key word for your business.

You need a name that is catchy, easy to remember and fun to pronounce. Catchy implies brand awareness, remembrance achieves brand recall and fun could earn brand loyalty. Besides, you don't need a tongue twister.

Short names achieve these objectives more easily, but a name shouldn't be so short as to lose meaning. Short names are also easier to key in accurately.

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Hyphenation could help if the targeted name is not available. For example, www.jecnicksapples.com is different from www.jecnicks-apples.com. So, if the former is taken, your fallback could be the latter. However, note the risk in hyphens: if a visitor types without the hyphen, he heads to the other site, meaning that you possibly lose business. So, consider taking different name altogether.

Choose a name extension that makes a statement about your business objective. An extension is the .com, .net, .biz, etc that goes with the domain name. If you have a regional focus, the appropriate regional extension may appeal to you, like .ng (Nigeria), .za (South Africa), .ca (Canada), .co.uk (United Kingdom), etc. If you desire a corporate profile, the .com remains the top dog, just as .org or .gov will be more appropriate for an NGO and government agency respectively. If, however, the primary extension you want is taken, your next option is to check out another extension, for instance, .net or .biz if your find .com unavailable for your name.

For the purpose of protecting you brand equity, it is a strategic investment to sweep up the various extensions and variations of the domain name you chose to do business with. You see, if your business thrives, you could be a target for identity theft or domain hijacking. Serious businesses therefore acquire the other extensions and point them to their site. With this, you won't have some smartie floating www.jecniksapples.net to steal business from your successful www.jecniksapples.com by capturing your customers who mistakenly use the .net extension. Besides, this provides a wider receptacle to direct traffic to your site. Variations that fall into this include the various extensions (.com, .net, .biz, .info, etc), hyphenated names, pluralisations, misspellings (Google.com and Gooogle.com), abbreviations (Tahitian Noni International as tahitiannoni.com and tni.com).

Name Registration
To register a domain name, you first check for its availability. This can be done from any registration website (say Go-Daddy.com, Yahoo.com or Registar.com). It could prove a bit frustrating - you will be surprised how many names will turn up unavailable - but be patient and try variations. Once a satisfactory available name is found, proceed to register it. Registration can be done online, does not cost a fortune and entails completing an uncomplicated form. If you can pay online (that is , with a payment card), this can be completed in no time.

Stay In Control - Beware!
While this whole domain name business looks straight forward, bear in mind that the internet has become a powerful business platform, a reason for it to also attract criminals and mischievous characters. If your site proves successful, your domain name could attract unfriendly interest. You need to worry about the registrar to ensure you retain your ownership. You also must worry about domain hijackers and cyber-squatters who may seek to divert business from your site, snatch it or maliciously affect your site with hate variations (like yoursitesucks.com version of yoursite.com). To stay in control, be on top of the following:

Expiry of Registration: Track this carefully to be sure you don't miss out on renewal and consequently lose your domain name. There are domain speculators out there with automated systems to acquire your domain if it's not promptly renewed. If you're lucky to have it offered back, be sure to pay through your nose. Unfortunately, you can't bank on a notification from the registrar - it may not come. If you own multiple domains, this could prove more challenging. So, put an efficient system in place to track expirations and effect renewals. You could renew for longer periods than one year to reduce the frequency. Better still, consolidate your domains with a registrar that offers an efficient portfolio management module.

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Contact Info: To further stave off costly errors, ensure that your contact info with the registrar remains updated. If it's not, you could miss a sensitive mail or call, such as a renewal notice. Besides, the registrar is empowered to cancel your registration if a verification notice to you is not responded to in 15 days.

Registrant: This is the owner of the domain as captured in the registration and should be no other than you/your company. If you have an opportunity to sell your site for good money but are not listed as the registrant, this could prove extremely damaging. How is this possible? Many third party registrations are being done and this, in fact, is the dominant practice currently in Nigeria - perhaps because many don't have payment cards. Generally, ISPs register for name owners but reflect themselves as registrant. No big deal, perhaps, except that if some of these sites become successful and financially valuable, it could become problematic. Insist on being listed as registrant. This is always verifiable through a "whois" search which you can do on any registration site. If they retain the log-on access to the account, it means they can alter it at any time. Your best bet it to take full control.

Administrative, Billing and Technical Contact: These are part of registration data and again should be your information. If your staff, web designer or other party is used, it puts control in their hand. If for any reason they fail to act on important notices to them or act against your interest, it could prove very expensive for you as you might end up losing your domain. One answer is to personally take responsibility or to put that in the hands of a trusted senior officer.

Registrar Lock: Some registrars have defaulted their system to lock your domain to stave off fraudulent transfer or modification of registration info. If your registrar has not done so, request and implement a lock to protect your domain.

Mails: Get your registrar white-listed in your mail box if you and/or your ISP have activated spam filters which could block their mail. This will save you the trouble of missing a sensitive mail from the registrar. Having said this, you must also be wary over mails relating to your domain to ensure you are not tricked by fraudsters into unwittingly transferring your domain. So, verify such mails and act only when you are sure of their genuineness and legitimacy.

Firewall all important domain name variations: As stated, pre-empt the hijackers and capture domain names that can be used to harm your business. Granted that this would cost money, it is expected that this protective action will be based on your estimation of the value of your domain name. If you see a viable business ahead, don't wait to struggle for related names with those who saw farther than you.

There could be something else to add, but be rest assured that if you can tidy up all the ends covered in this piece, you should be substantially home and dry. Don't overlook the value of your domain, unless you don't expect your business to grow and command value. If it does but you didn't prepare for it, you could be up against all sorts of nightmares concerning your domain name. So begin now to treat it as a valuable business asset.

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