When we launched Far’n’Beyond, we didn’t look ten years into the future or even five years into the future, and when funds were tight, we were a little bit cheap when it came to our domain names!
We didn’t buy every important variation of our domain name or similar domains, which in retrospect we wished we had done.
Although we don’t mind sharing a name with Progressive Rock and Melodic metal band www.farnbeyond.net, we do wish we had complete control over the domain variations.
Do you have control of your domain space? Which Domain Name should I buy?
Purchasing the key domain names that were available at the time would have given us greater control of the brand space that we would now like for our domain. This includes names which are similar to Far’n’Beyond such as “far and beyond”.
A company recently outbid us for the domain www.farandbeyond.com and have claimed they will only accept a four figures sum to release to ourselves or we can embark on a US legal battle which is well beyond our budgets.
Fortunately, we rank very highly in search engines, and although frustrating, the company who owns farandbeyond.com offers no direct competition to our business. It would be a different scenario if they were a print or design company.
Recommendations
From our experience we would always give the following tips to anyone who is looking to build an online presence, either now or in the future:
Make It Clear
Try and find a memorable domain name that is easy to say over the phone with nothing clever which is going to confuse customers.
Own a Space
Select a name that is different from your competitors and purchase at least the .co.uk, .com and .net versions of the name and any country extensions where you operate now or may in the future.
Look at other extensions which may suit your business in the future – i.e. .mobi for mobile/application websites.
Use Your Website Domains
Select the domain which is most suitable i.e. www.ReallyGoodBranding.com and ensure all variations of the domain forward to your main website and email domain. Only use one domain across all your marketing and email communication. This should reduce visitor confusion and ensure the maximum impact from your website.
Keep them all together
Ensuring all your domain names are purchased in the same place under the same account will help you keep control of your online presence. Ideally also host your website and emails from the same company. This will mean you only need one point of contact to address any issues or changes.
Check Your Domain
Click Here to see if your domain name is available?
Obviously, we would recommend ourselves for your website hosting and domain purchases. For our clients, it enables us to make changes to websites quickly and easily, and from our experience, it also gives peace of mind.
All our websites are hosted with The Really Good Hosting Company, and we benefit from 24/7 Support which replies within one hour to all enquiries.
The online control panel gives you complete control of your domains, email accounts and hosting.
