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Coming up with a name for your products or brands can be challenging. However, it’s a super important step in developing your business! The reason for this is that it’s one of the things that distinguishes your brand from your competition. It’s basically your business’s storefront sign on the internet and allows you to tell your brand’s story.

But how do you choose a domain name that isn’t just a name? Today we share some tips!

Different name categories

To pick the right name for your brand, product, or service you should know the categories names can fall under: literal names, metaphoric names, and fanciful names.

• Literal names describe the functionality or quality of a service, product, or brand. Such as “Grandma’s bakery”: a bakery offering traditional flour-based food such as bread, pastries, and pies.
• Metaphoric names make you think about a brand, product, or service in a way that goes beyond its everyday purpose by referring to one thing by mentioning another. Like “Forest”, which is a productivity app that helps to rebuild real forests when you’re using it.
• Fanciful names are names that are not related to the brand, product, or services’ at all. This is a great option for new brands since it allows brands to build their story from scratch. However, these types of names do take a while to establish.

Finding the right domain name

There is no right way to find the right domain name and there’s no name that’s perfect. However, one thing that’s always good to do is having a brainstorming session with coworkers, friends, or family. In a small group you can talk about the brand or product’s story & create a list of possible names. You can find inspiration in books, TV shows, and magazines. Once you’ve chosen a name it’s important to share it with people to make sure that it’s catchy and memorable and makes sense to others.

Do you think you’ve come up with a good domain name?

Then it’s important to familiarize yourself with the process. Some things to check and consider are:

• Are there similarities between your brand, product, or services and those of your competitors? If so, is it a good or a bad thing? Sometimes it helps to highlight similarities (such as GlassRepair.com) by using keywords that describe your business, whilst other times it’s better to choose a fanciful name to set yourself apart from your competitors. This depends on what you have to offer.
• What is your market? Does the name of your product and brand make sense for your market? Of course, operating in a certain market doesn’t mean you that you should have a domain name related to that field, but it should make sense.
• Is your domain name easy to type & find? This part is critical to online success. Only with an easy to type domain name, customers will be able to find your site quickly. Therefore it’s important to keep your domain name relatively short and easy to spell. Also try to avoid numbers and confusing hyphens.
• What’s your target area? If your business is local, adding your city in your domain name can make it easier for local customers to remember and find. An example is: GlassRepairLondon.com
• Did you do a trademark search? When choosing a domain name it’s important that it isn’t trademarked, copyrighted, or already used by another company.
• Did you choose a domain name extension? A domain name extension is a suffix such as .com or .nl at the end of your domain name. It’s important to choose one that fits your business. The most popular domain extension is .com. However, nowadays it can be difficult finding an available .com extension. Some other great extensions are:.app – for apps
  .info – for informational sites
  .co – for companies, community, and commerce
  .net – usually for technical sites
  .me – for personal sites

It can also be worth it to purchase misspelled versions of your domain name and different extensions. By doing this, you’re sure that competitors can’t register other versions of your brand.

Do you know what your domain name will be? Then it’s important to act fast. Domain names sell out quickly, but they are also very inexpensive.

We can register your domain name for you!
> Click here for more information

Your website is a very important extension of your business. A website is successful when it satisfies your customer’s needs but also helps to reach your business goals. But how do you create a successful website? Today we share some tips!

1. Determine the goals of your website

The first step is determining what you want the site to accomplish and which transitional goals are needed to accomplish this. Whether you want sales, fame, community, leading people to your store, subscribers, or something completely different, you have to start with defining your goals. Only with your goals in mind, you can come up with a good design.

2. Choose a good domain name

When you’ve determined your goals, the next step is deciding on the domain name (AKA the address of your website). When choosing a domain name it is important that it includes a keyword that’s relevant for your business. Example: are you selling beeswax? Then adding “beeswax” into your domain name can help people find your business more easily. Do you already have a business name? Then, you’ll ideally want to choose a domain that matches this.

3. Pick a reliable hosting provider

When choosing your domain name you’ve probably come across some hosting providers. We know that picking the right one can be a bit overwhelming. Important things to look at when choosing are: can they handle your traffic, is their hosting compatible with your website’s needs, and are they reliable? We personally have been using Hostio Solutions for many years.

4. Set-up a custom email address

The next step is setting up a custom email address that matches your domain like contactus[at]beeswax.com. This will make it easier for customers to contact you, but it will also make your business look professional and increase brand awareness when people receive your emails. By creating a custom email address you can split work from personal and keep a good overview.

5. Raise awareness

One transitional goal of a website is often raising awareness. A good way to raise awareness is to start with your business name, location, and contact details. Putting your contact information in the footer of every page will encourage people to contact you whenever they have a question. Furthermore, adding an “about us” page and being active on social media will help visitors with getting to know you; That’s what we want!

6. Create a “contact us” page

To make it easy for (potential) customers to stay in touch with you it’s important to have an easy to navigate “contact us” page. On this page, you can add a contact form where visitors can put in their details and questions. This will also make it super easy for you to have top-notch customer service!

7. Create a FAQ

If you notice that people keep asking the same questions, then it can be good to create a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page. By doing this you can explain different aspects of your business and avoid having to spend time answering the same questions over and over again – no one’s got time for that. It’s a win-win situation!

8. Create descriptive website content

Search engines take words from your website to see what it is about. The better the information on your website, the higher you’ll show up in search results. Therefore, it’s important to add descriptive website content to your website and work on your SEO.

9. Highlight what makes your business unique

Next, it’s important to highlight the things that make your business unique. For example: do you sell a special kind of beeswax? Then it can be worth it to make a separate page for that. By doing this, your special product will be easy to find and easy to promote!

10. Choose one color palette

Finally, it’s good to consistently use the same fonts, font sizes, colors, and other aspects of the design on every page. This will make your website recognizable, presentable, and professional.

Imagine a guy named Alex is looking for protein powder. He searches online and sees an ad for Protein Today that now offers 20% off everything. Ready to buy protein powder he clicks on the ad and “lands” on a landing page: it’s the moment Alex decides whether he will become a customer or not.

On a good landing page, Alex will find his protein powder immediately. After he found it, it’s a super easy and quick process to order it. To prevent Alex from changing his mind, it’s he’s also not overloaded with unnecessary information about things he’s not looking for (for example different kinds of supplements or vitamins).

Why is it important to have a good landing page?

As the saying goes, “first impressions are everything”. It’s the exact same when it comes to landing pages. A landing page is often the first experience someone has with your business. When someone visits your website, they usually have a reason for being there.

If your landing page doesn’t meet their needs, chances are big that they won’t get the information they want, the product they’re looking for, buy something, or sign up for something. Then, you’ve may have lost a potential customer; That’s of course what we want to prevent.

The result of a bad landing page? A high bounce rate and a low conversion rate.

Guidelines for creating a strong landing page

A landing page can be any page on your website that someone “lands” on from another place. People can end up on your landing page through, for example, ads, social media, e-mails, and friend referrals. When you want to create a strong landing page that leads to conversions, there are some basic guidelines that are good to follow:

• If your visitors come from an advertisement, it’s important that the landing page they are sent to is relevant to that ad. Do you have an advertisement for protein powder? Then the landing page should be about that offer.
• Use a call-to-action such as “buy now” to encourage visitors to do what they came for. This can be downloading, buying, and/or reading something.
• Stay true to your brand’s style, tone and personality.
• Use images and colors to attract the customer’s attention.
• Make sure the first thing people see are your most popular features and links.

Using digital metrics for your landing page

If your website has been running for a while, it can be good to use tools such as Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics, and Crazy Egg. With the metrics that these tools give you, you can review your landing pages and see how well they work.

Some important things to look at are:

• Where did your customers come from? This can, for example, be a link on another website, an advertisement, social media, or a search query in Google. When they came from a search engine, it’s important to know which search query brought them to your website.
• How do visitors behave on your website? Do they immediately bounce off or interact with your products, call-to-actions, images, and offers?

Does the reason people visit your website matches with what they find on your landing page? Then you’re good to go! Is this not the case? Then it’s good to give your landing pages some TLC so you can attract the right customers in the future.

How do you know if your new landing page is strong?

A great way to see if your updated landing page is strong enough is A/B testing. For example, with A/B testing you can test what the best place for your call-to-action is or which call-to-action works best.

Another option is to give a survey to your customers. In this survey you can ask questions such as “why did you visit?” and “were you able to find what you were looking for and if not why?”

Imagine you’re having dinner with your friends. One of them is super excited about the opening day of a new, funky art gallery. Of course, everyone immediately takes their mobile phones out of their pocket and checks out the company’s website to apply. Now, we just have to hope the art gallery has a mobile-friendly website that makes a great impression.

What is a mobile-friendly website?

A mobile-friendly website offers a clean experience to visitors. The most important thing here is that the website doesn’t overwhelm or confuse people with too much text and images.

Every company approaches creating a mobile-friendly website differently:

• Some create an app that customers need to download and install. You’ve probably already seen your favorite clothing stores do this.
• Other companies create a mobile site first, followed by a design for desktop. This is a good option if most of your customers will use your website on their mobile devices.
• Some companies keep their desktop website and create a completely new mobile-friendly site.
• Finally, companies can choose to create a website with a responsive design.

The latter, creating a responsive design, is what most companies end up doing.

What is a responsive design?

A responsive website design is a design that is able to adapt to different resolutions, screen sizes, and devices. This means that no matter with which device a potential customer visits your website, it will work well and look great.

What are the benefits of a responsive website?

By creating a website with a responsive design you only need one website and one design. This allows customers to get used to your website and use it on their desktop, tablets, and mobile phones. Having one website with one design is not only great for branding but can also lead to new sales.

Furthermore, having a mobile-friendly website can be great for search engine optimization (SEO) because they often show up higher in the search results. This is even more important when you’re a local business that offers local services.

Best practices for a mobile-friendly website

Now, you probably agree with us when we say that you need a mobile-friendly website. When you’re creating a mobile-friendly website it’s good to keep the following best practices in mind:

• Create clear and simple menus. Preferably a vertical drop-down menu.
• Make sure you use clear and visible call-to-action buttons.
• Navigation, call-to-actions, and important content come first. Promotions and other distractions second.
• Make your logo tappable so that visitors can easily return to your homepage.
• Add a search box at the top of your website so that visitors can easily find what they’re looking for. To make it even better: allow auto-correct, autocomplete, sorting, and filters.
• Keep the purchase process as simple as possible so visitors don’t change your mind. A plus: give them the option to check out as a guest.