Starting A Business – The Online Essentials

An excerpt from the book…

Choosing a Business Name

If you’ve already chosen your name and registered it, don’t skip this part. There might be good reasons to change it.

Your business name will become a very important identification tag in people’s memory. It’s essential that it is selected carefully and that it doesn’t change! Changing your business name results in great loss in terms of online reputation, trustworthiness and search penetration. So take the time to get it right at the outset. There’s plenty to learn about the psychology of choosing a good business name – but we’ll stick here to the technical and practical aspects.

Business Name = Domain Name

If at all possible your registered business name and your registered domain name need to be identical – except for the spaces and the suffix (.com.au – or similar does not need to be in your business name). For this reason, your business name needs to be available in both the ASIC business name registry and the domain name registry.

Let’s say your business is called “Fred’s Funky Cafe”. Ideally you want www.fredsfunkycafe.com.au – its what people will automatically type in if they’ve heard of you. The domain name www.ffc.com.au is not nearly as good because people won’t automatically know to abbreviate it. The less help they need in finding you, the better.

So before you register your Business name, check that the closest possible domain name is also available and isn’t heavily contested (see below). There is a point at which long business names ought to be abbreviated for domain names, but try to shorten them both together where possible

The process of searching for and registering both these names currently flows like this:

• Get an ABN
• Create an ASIC account (free) click here
• Search for available business names
• Compare to available domain names click here
• Decide and purchase both in the one sitting – BUT read the rest of this article first. There are important points about whether or not to use a .au domain and about namespace competition. Some easy research that will save you thousands.

Your total cost for this session should be about $82 (three years business name) + $50 (two years domain name)

Remember – domain names can’t include apostrophes, or any other punctuation. Only dashes are allowed and you should avoid them at all costs. We’ll talk about how to register domain names in the next section.

Competition For Namespace

You must be seen! When you start a new business, if you have a shop front, you will erect a sign in a spot where it can be clearly seen that showcases your core product. Fred’s Funky Cafe will buy a great stock image of some delicious coffee art and use that as a backdrop for his logo. If he can’t get a surface that’s easily seen by the local traffic, he will buy some sandwich boards and wheel them out each day. He knows he simply must be seen.

The internet search environment is no different, except that there are fewer slots in that precious first page and far more competitors. Now Fred will want to be found for search terms like “Great coffee in Sydney” but when he types that into Google Search, he finds that there are millions of listings. Competing for search exposure in that market will include a very diverse (and possibly expensive) strategy and we’ll touch on that later.

Your name helps you to narrow the field down. Once people have heard of you, they will often add your name, or part of it, to their search phrases. So you ought to do the same.

This is how you check that your namespace can be dominated by you. Type your intended business name straight into the search bar as it stands and see what happens.

If Fred finds the screen filled with results about a local funk bar who have regular guests called Fred and Ginger or a famous chef called Fred, that also happens to sell coffee – then he’d better take notice. Do NOT begin by taking on a long-time competitor who already dominates your name space. I know it’s hard, but change your name. You absolutely must stack the deck in your favour if you are to prosper.

Cute Spelling Is A No-no

Here’s the problem with cute spelling; it leaves the common spelling open for your competitors to buy and it leaves you on the wrong side of common knowledge. The result is that people who are actually looking for you will find your competitor – yuck! So if your desired domain name is unavailable (twinerestaurant.com.au), don’t be tempted to simply spell it differently (twynerestaurant.com.au). Not only have you entered someone’s very specific namespace as a competitor, but you’ve given them the upper hand because people know how to spell twine.

Just try it and you will see what we mean. Google will assume that you meant the correct spelling and ask you “did you mean twine restaurant” while actually showing you the results for that search.

This is a terrible heartbreak once you’ve already bought business names and printed signs and business cards and etc. So do your research first. You’ll be glad you did.

Facebook URLs –  A Consideration

Facebook also has a URL (universal resource locator) structure that is worth checking here too. Just type into your address bar (not your search bar) www.facebook.com/fredsfunkycafe and see if it is available. This is not a deal breaker if it’s unavailable, but if someone has already taken it, check them out. Especially find out where they are and if their distribution area overlaps yours (including your expansion plan) and how active and current is their page. Are they a threat in your targeted namespace?

Also do a standard search within facebook’s search field to get a feel for namespace competition on Facebook