Most businesses depend on their website to market and sell their products or services online. Creating an attractive website that is well optimized for search engines is essential. However, there’s much more to creating a successful website. The process of getting a website live can be a tricky one, especially for those who aren’t so tech savvy. Two of the essential elements are the domain name and web hosting.
Get dotted with the right domain name
Domain Names
The domain name says a lot about a business before visitors even reach a website. It’s all about choosing the best .com available. While many good .com’s have already been taken it is still crucial to select a domain name that suits your business. Since the internet continues to grow leaps and bounds there is a much larger choice than just the .com. Depending on the type of business or organization you run, you have a choice of .net, .us, .info, .org and more. Most importantly, your domain name represents your brand name and is the main URL that drives traffic to your site. Domain names can be bought from a domain name registrar with rates starting from a few dollars up to hundreds of thousands.
The benefits of domain names
There are many things you can do with human-friendly, memorable domain name. To begin with, it helps point a domain to a website. For example, rather having an address bar that displays http://101.174.121.08/ it is much simpler to have http://yourcompany.com. With a domain name you can set up email addresses for a more professional look rather than one from free email providers such as Hotmail and Gmail. An email address such as name@yourcompany.com is a far more impressive approach for business email.
A domain name is the best way to protect your identity and prevents your competitors registering a domain that spells out your identity. Even if you don’t plan to use it immediately, getting a domain name in the domain name registrar will protect you in the future. Many names have already been registered and are as valuable as gold. If you do happen to own a rare domain it could potentially be very valuable since there is no limit to the worth of a domain name.
Domain name and web hosting
Your website needs to be hosted on a server in order to go live on the internet. There are many companies that offer both domain registration and hosting services. Once you’ve registered your unique domain name with a reputed domain name registrar you will need to purchase a web hosting package from the host company. The type of web server you require depends on several factors. Shared web hosting and dedicated web hosting are the two common packages available. If you have a simple website and do not require extra bandwidth you could choose a shared hosting plan and share space on the hosting company’s server with other website. On the other hand, if your website experiences large volumes of traffic and you wish to add other features to your site, your hosting company may recommend a dedicated server.
Domain Names & Web Hosting 