Ways web hosting affects your business website – If you decide to build a new website for business, and you want it to be successful, you will need a good domain name. The domain you choose, however, may not be very appropriate, or it may be quite hard for people to remember. You may find this out only after the site has already been launched and it may be too late – you will have to rebrand the site, while any ads or print materials you may have already paid for will probably go to waste.

5 Ways Web Hosting Mistakes Affects Your Business

Below, you will find 5 ways web hosting affects your business website:

1. Using numbers

Using “2” instead of “to” or “4” instead of “for” or “four” is something you should avoid. While you may find it witty to use numbers, many people will most likely find it difficult to guess what you had in mind when you registered the domain. It will be frustrating if they want to visit your website and cannot figure out what the right domain for it should be.

The above is valid for using numbers in general, not only when you replace a preposition – should visitors spell the word or type the number? They will either go to another site that uses a similar domain or will see an error in their browser if they don’t guess the right spelling, or vice versa.

2. Using hard to spell words

If your domain is hard to spell, most likely very few people will take their chance and try to type it. You can see why otorhinolaryngologist.com is not registered, but many domains that include “ENT” (Ears, nose, throat) exist. This is not necessarily related to the length of the domain – syzygy.com is an example of a short, but hard to spell domain.

You can easily check if the domain you want to register will be easy to use. Tell the name you have chosen to a few friends, either face to face or on the phone, and ask them to spell it back or send it to you via text/IM/email. If they give you the right domain, then anybody should be able to spell it correctly. If not, you should consider changing the name to something easier. After all, a domain should not only represent your brand, but should also be easy enough for your customers to remember it and to enter it in their web browser.

3. Do not register a very long domain

Long domain names can be clever as you can use a whole phrase or even a sentence. One such example is momthisishowtwitterworks.com. In the general case, however, long domains are difficult to remember. If a visitor clicks a link and ends up on your site, they will see the whole domain in lower-case letters and with no spaces, as this is how all web browsers display domain names in their address bar. With no distinction between the words, long domains are hard to read, so it is likely that visitors will simply not bother to read and to remember them.

Using a long domain is not a good marketing practice either. Digital signatures and business cards usually have limited space for a website URL, so a long one will look too stretched or will be wrapped on two lines, which won’t look very professional.

4. Forgetting to Check if similar domains exist

A lot of good domains have already been registered, so you may have to be more creative to find an appealing domain for your site. Registering a domain that will be similar to an existing domain, especially a competitor’s one, will only confuse your visitors. Adding “the”, “a”, a hyphen or any other minor change will not make much of a difference and anybody who wants to go to your site is likely to end up on the competitor’s one.

If the other website is much older than yours, it is also likely that you will get a lot of negative comments as people will think you are trying to steal some of the traffic the other site generates by using an almost identical domain. They will not care if you registered a similar domain by chance, and not intentionally.

5. Do not use trademarks

This is something quite important that you should never forget when you search for a new domain name. Even if you believe the domain you want includes only common words, any of them can be a trademark in your field of business and the company that holds the trademark can sue you and take the domain. While registering a domain with a trademark may be an honest mistake, many people register such domains in bad faith. Regardless of the reason, the trademark holder can file a complaint with an arbitration center or a court in accordance with the UDRP.

If you want to avoid such legal issues, you should do some research and make sure that any words you want to use in your domain name are not registered trademarks. Even if you pay a trademark attorney to do the research for you, you will spend much less time and money than if you have to be engaged in legal battles.

Conclusion

Ways web hosting affects your business website plays a critical role in an online business. It can make or break the company’s luck on the web. Choosing an incorrect web hosting provider might lead to a loss in sales and revenues, which affects the overall business.

We help business owners avoid web hosting mistakes that will mar their business image on the internet. If you need help with setting up your business website without making any of the hosting mistakes listed above (and more) leave us a comment below or contact us directly.