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.

A recent study conducted by Stanford University’s Persuasive Technology Lab and Consumer Reports WebWatch invited more than 2,600 people to rate the credibility of Web sites. The results of the study showed that web users pay far more attention to visual aspects of a site (such as layout, typography and color schemes) than to its content.

We find that people evaluate a web site’s visual design in less than 8 seconds. That’s a quick first impression! So what makes a web site user-friendly? The answer to that is different for every type of web site and every web surfer. But we can offer some guidelines based on comments people in the study gave and based on what our clients have told us.

• Web surfers like a site that loads quickly on their computer. Your web designer should optimize all images used on your site for the web.
• A user friendly web site is easy to navigate. Place the main menu on every page of the site, in the same place. Make buttons that need to be clicked visually obvious and easy to select with a mouse. Use alt text to describe images for handicapped web surfers who may not be able to view them.
• Have your contact information clear on every page of your site: phone number, physical address and email address. I can think of at least three reasons for doing this. 1) It makes it easy for viewers to contact you. 2) Your site will be referenced properly if someone prints out a specific page from it. 3) It shows that there’s a real company behind your site.
• People return to sites that contain useful and timely information. Update your site’s content and make note of the last time a page was updated if it is particularly timely, like a schedule of events. A calendar with information that expired 6 months ago will make surfers wonder what else is not accurate on your site. If you are providing data or statistics, make it easy to verify the accuracy of this information. You can provide citations, references or links to other sites. Even if people don’t follow these links, your material looks more reliable.
• Your web site design should be appropriate for your purpose and a superb marketing piece. Almost everyone knows someone who can put a web site together. But your web site represents your business to the whole world 24 hours a day. Ask your designer about their choices for layout, typography, images and more. If they have well thought out answers, then your best interests were in mind when your site was designed.
• Beware of clutter on your site, or people will avoid it. Some “cluttering” items are: links to unrelated sites, overuse of animation and pop up ads. Some web designers forget about users and instead highlight their dazzling technological skills. Instead, keep it simple and keep ‘em coming back.
• Let users see that real, trustworthy people stand behind your site. You can show employee photos and bios, a photo of your offices or list respected organizations that you are a member of, such as your Chamber of Commerce or the Better Business Bureau. Be sure to highlight the expertise in your organization. Give credentials if they’re impressive.
• Avoid errors on your site, no matter how small they seem. Typos and broken links hurt a site’s credibility more than most people imagine. If you don’t have the information a surfer is looking for, they’ll search for someone else who does. If you wait a day to proofread site changes before making them live, you’re more likely to find typographical errors.

Successful interaction between a web site and a user keep people coming back for more. Suddenly your web site operates the way people think it should, because your designer thought about what people want from your site before creating it.

Some information for this article was collected from: Fogg, B.J. (May 2002). “Stanford Guidelines for Web Credibility.” A Research Summary from the Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab. Stanford University.www.webcredibility.org/guidelines.