I’m asked all the time by people what I think they should do to change their website to help grow their business. Sometimes they start with, “Should I change my prices?” or “Do I need to pay to advertise on Google”.

To really understand what needs to be updated on a website, you should first read through your site’s reports or statistics. These numbers can tell you haw many people come to your site, what phrase they searched for to get them there, how much time they are spending on your site, which pages get viewed the most, which web browser your site is being viewed in, etc.

If you have a bunch of visitors, but they leave your site right away, something needs to change. If you aren’t getting visitors because your site can’t be found when searching for words related to your site, something needs to change.

Don’t start by lowering prices if your online store isn’t selling. If you are priced right with your competition in your marketplace, there are lots of other web-related things to look at.

When I look at statistics, the 2 items that intrigue me the most are:

1. what phrase did someone search for to find the site

2. how much time are they spending on the site.

How can you view your web stats?

That differs for every web site. Perhaps your hosting company has reporting automatically installed. Maybe your web or SEO company has placed an analytics program like Google Analytics directly on your site. You should be able to find out with an email or 2 to the people you’ve worked with.

After the birth of my second daughter I went home and cried. “Did we seriously give her THAT middle name?” I wailed, reconsidering something my daughter would be branded with for the rest of her life. (Was it post partum depression? Well, perhaps. Luckily, the name suits her now.)

When you start out your web site, its domain name is just that – its NAME. Naming your site should NOT be a no-brainer. It deserves thought and decision. And here’s why.

1. Your site needs to be remembered to be found. Have you ever visited TomsLuxuryCondosInTampaBay.com? Probably not. If you met Tom, would you remember that was the name of his website? Probably not. A web domain name needs to be short and easy to remember. It is beneficial for the name of the site to describe what you do. I have created a site for a client called YogaWithHaris.com. Guess what, Haris teaches Yoga classes. If you know her, it’s easy to remember. Notice that she did not name her site Yoga-With-Haris.com. Not everyone would remember to hyphenate her site, and she would lose students that way. Some people make the mistake of using abbreviations in their domain name. Searchers may know that RX stands for pharmacy, but won’t expect SmittsRX.com to be the domain name for Smitt’s Pharmacy. Another part of the “remembering your site” process is trying to find the .com that suits you. Web searchers tend to automatically type in .com. If you go with .net or .biz, or some other extension, your site won’t be remembered as well.

2. You should cover your bases. Haris of YogaWithHaris.com has one of those names that everyone spells wrong, so she also purchased YogaWithHarris.com. That way, when people spell her name wrong they will be redirected to her site. (Use a 301 redirect for proper search engine indexing.) If you are lucky enough that the .com you want for your site is available, you might want to consider purchasing the .net and .biz of the same name as well. That way if the .net is bought by someone else, searchers won’t accidentally go to the wrong site. It’s relatively inexpensive and good web site marketing. Originally, .com was for commercial sites, .net was for a network related site, .org was for non-profit organizations and .gov was for government-related sites. Those cateogires are no longer regulated. At the time of this writing, .edu is still set aside for educational sites.

3. More expensive domain names are not better. When you have a web site you probably pay annually for a few things. One is for the domain name. That charge is for you to keep the name of your web site so no one else can use it. It is typically a separate charge from your web hosting. Hosting is the charge to keep your web site “live” on the internet for people to view. Domain name registration should not break the bank. You should pay annually, or once every few years. If you are paying $20/mo just for your domain name, you’re being duped. Average charges are $10-$30 per year.

4. Your domain name can be purchased by others. Please remember to pay your bill on time when renewing your domain name. Some other business out there may want the same domain name, may want to keep you from having your domain name, or may want to take advantage of the traffic your web site gets. They can go on a wait list, get notified when your domain name becomes available, and snatch it up before you know it. Similarly, if the domain name you want is taken, you can go on a wait list to purchase it.

5. Keywords in a domain name help with search engine optimization. When search engines are ranking web sites, what they are really trying to do is make the most relevant sites available first to its corresponding keywords. You wouldn’t want to type “cars for sale” when you search and end up at a Barbie doll collector’s web site. The search engines know this, and they look at all parts of a web site for relevancy. This includes the domain name. For example, yogawithharis.com contains the word “yoga” in the domain name. And rdesignonline.com contains the word “design”. The domain name includes the company name and their most prominent keyword. It’s easy to remember and describes what the company is about.

In short, your company should have an easy domain name, one that is descriptive of your business, a .com if available, and the domain name should be renewed on time. You can check to see if the domain name you want is available at www.godaddy.com.