When starting our business, one designing web sites, it was obvious that we needed to purchase a domain name for it. After all, it was a business that was 100% dependent on the Internet. However, when I approached a potential customer about them having their own domain on the Internet, they asked why do I need to do that when one can get free domains from sites like Google and Yahoo, or others like Blogspot and AOL, or even from your ISP, but with a catch. You have to be part of a subdomain, such as yourcompany.primarydomain.com, or as a child of the primary domain, such as www.yourisp.net/yourcompany. I tried to do some research online as to the reason to purchase your own domain, but all I could find was instructions on how to purchase your own domain. Nothing on why you should. So here are my thoughts concerning this.
Professionalism
All major businesses have their own domain. Even businesses whose primary method of producing sales is not web based have their own domain name. For example, not to pick on the home building industry, but no one would purchase a home over the Internet, but all major home builders have their own domain name with a web site advertising their products. Personally, I think that a home builder with a domain would be more credible than one that is using a free service. While a business can be successful with out their own domain, the chances of success are greatly improved with a domain name of your own company name.
Additionally, when you own your own domain, you can set up email addresses based on this domain. For example, I would take a company a little more seriously if their email was something like johndoe@yourcompany.com versus yourcomapny@yourisp.net. With all of the fly-by-night companies and scams that are out there today, every bit of credibility will reflect more positively on your company.
Marketing
Let’s start with memory recognition. A potential customer will definitely find it easier to remember something like www.google.com. Imagine if Google would have started with something like www.someisp.net/google? Would they have been as successful? Personally, that is too much for me to remember. And imagine what that would look like on a business card? Business cards would have to be the size of note cards!
Funny, while we have Google on the mind, everyone is talking about search engine optimization (SEO) these days. Not having your own domain, and one provided to you from another actually improves their search rankings, and not your own. Whereas, if you own your own domain name, it is 100% your benefit. While there is more to SEO that just owning your own domain, SEO is an art in itself, and there are books and companies dedicated to this subject.
Portability
Domain names are portable. As we have already seen, a domain name is just like a billboard pointing to your website. If you are using a free hosting service like those mentioned earlier, you are tied to that hosting service. For example, your website is www.yourisp.com/yourbusiness and your email address is yourbusiness@yourisp.com, and you decide you want to change your ISP to another company. You cannot exactly change your website address to www.yournewisp.com/yourbusiness and your email address to yourbusiness@yournewisp.com and expect your customers to know about the changes. If you own your own domain, you can move the website and with a very minor technical adjustment the domain name will point to your “new” site. This way, you are free to change hosting services to find a better deal, or if the service you are currently receiving is inadequate. The important thing is that none of your visitors’ bookmarks will need to change, nor will the move break any links to your site! This is impossible without a domain name.
Cost
Having your own domain is inexpensive. Today, one can go to godaddy.com and purchase a domain name for ten dollars and some change for a year. In today’s world of stretching the dollar as much as it can go, how can one not afford to own their own domain.
