Posts Tagged ‘website planning’
You NEED to OWN your own Domain Name
Please! I am pleading with any business owner or entrepreneur who is looking to get a website for their business.
You really need to ensure that your domain name is registered and owned by you – the business owner. I cannot stress this enough.
Yes, I know websites are not your forte, if it were you would be in the website design business. But you are not, you are a fabulous entrepreneur doing great business and with a nice website online that someone helped you setup. But, times have changed and now you need to up level and change your entire web presence, so you ask someone like me to work with you and on your website.
Trouble is… you discover really don’t have a lot of access to the site.
This following situation has happened 3 times in the last 2 weeks to people I know. PLEASE DON’T BE # 4.
We start checking into your present website setup only to discover that your other web guy (sorry boys, but 3/3 were guys) registered your domain name and nowhere in that setup is your name listed. This means that you in fact, do not own your own domain name nor have any control over it.
How bad can it be? 
Let’s see…
- The other person has access to the domain registry, not you.
- The other person controls when your domain name gets renewed (hint, no renewal= no website online, also known as “Why is the website not working?”)
- The other person controls changes and access to your Domain Name Servers (which are part of the setup on how/where your account is hosted and with a web hosting system, you will run into the same situation as in # 2 above, people asking: “Why is the website not working?”)
- Worst of all, your website is connected to this! The website that people use daily.
BUY IT YOURSELF
Please make certain when you need to setup a new domain name or website that you take 5 minutes and go to Bluehost or GoDaddy and buy your own domain name. It’s as simple as buying anything else online. Pick out what you want and put it in your shopping cart, the cart with your name on it, then pay for it with your credit card or paypal account.
Guess what – now you own that baby! No one else.
After this you can always give your web person the access in your account. You can give your webperson the technical contact in the account, something you can change anytime. Please buy the darn thing yourself. And no matter what way you do this you remain the Registrant – the person who owns the domain name.
If I now have you scared and not sure if you own your present domain name? You can go to Whois.com and look up your domain name. Be certain whose name it is under and while sill in a good working relationship, get it transferred to your name by your web person! Right now, in all three situations we are having a hard time getting contact to get access and changes made.
You NEED to own your own Domain Name, I cannot say this enough!
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So? How many of you need to have a talk with someone now?
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Analytics are your Friend
I am back from a lovely vacation in sunny Florida – my family and I had a blast. The kids loved Disney World and with all the walking we did I even shed a few pounds. Now it’s back to work and checking on how things went while I was away.
One of the big things I check monthly are my analytics – setup with Google’s Free Analytics tools – on my websites. A big part of any online marketing and business should be ensuring this is set in place so you can check that your efforts at online marketing are working. You can learn a lot from finding out what words used in online searches bring people to your site – what page they view the most – what page they linger on the most and also whether you have any issues with your website.
As I was reading through my emails and blog updates, I saw that the Social Media Examiner published a blog post while I was away that explained how you can add Google Analytics to your facebook fanpage! If you are at all serious about checking your traffic, stats and getting this information I suggest you take a read and follow their steps to add this feature to your fanpage. The instructions are very detailed and helpful.
Don’t forget that you can always look at the Insights on your facebook fanpage account as well. They keep stats and graphs on the traffic to your fanpage as well. Very easy to read info and helpful in knowing what kind of visitors are coming to and joining your fanpage.
Analytics don’t have to be scary – if you are intimidated then take them slowly and just check the basics. But at least do that much; the info you gather can be very helpful in modifying your online marketing of your business.
Your Domain Name – Book yours Now! Here’s why…
Soooo… Sunday I had a big scare from one of my Google Alerts. The one that got me was one for my own name.
Yes, I have an alert setup for me and my name as well as my business name. I’m not egotistical or anything, I actually recommend everyone have these types of alerts setup in order to keep tabs on when and where your name comes up in the online world. An alert, for those new to this term, is an email update of the latest Google results (web, news, etc.) based upon the search parameter you setup. It’s an effective way to keep on top of mentions out on the Web of you, or even your company or clients.
Anyhow, Sunday I open the Alert for “Kathy Colaiacovo” and come to find it is a link to a website under construction. I click on it and the fear sets in! Why? The website was www.kathycolaiacovo.com !! It was me! And I didn’t own it! Crap! That’s all I could think was “Crap!”, and how dumb I had been because I had not bothered to take the time and $10 to book the darn domain name – my name.
I was so mad! And there I was looking at the screen and reading the message that said how this website was the home of a future website. I was fuming at my desk and my stupidity – sorry no better word could describe what I was calling myself at that moment!
I decided I had to see who owned the domain name, I knew there could be another Kathy Colaiacovo out there but, OH! I was so mad at myself. I head over to the Whois registry website to lookup the owner of this fine domain name – only so I could yell at them in my mind. They had every right to buy it, since I dropped the ball. Read the rest of this entry »
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