6 Guidelines For Choosing A Domain Name

For most of us that have been blogging for a very long time, I think one of the mistakes that most of us made is that we choose the wrong domain name. There is some domain name that one actually choose and paid for but you later discovered that you should have chosen another domain name that actually captures what your website is all about. In this article, I want to talk about some of the guidelines for choosing a domain name. Follow me as we are going to look at that together in this article.

Now the considerations…

#1 Relevant to your business

There are some domain names that I have come across and I can easily deduce that their owners do not do their assignments very well before they choose those domain names. When it comes to choosing a domain name, you have to choose a domain name that is relevant to your business. From your domain name, visitors should be able to guess what the website is all about. This will also aid search engine optimization as well.

#2 Avoid punctuations

Also, you need to also avoid the use of punctuation when you are opening your domain names. Please note that when you add such punctuation marks to your domain name it will be accepted but it will be difficult at times for your visitors to remember that a punctuation mark is included in the website. This might lead to a situation where you lose a sizeable number of your visitors.

#3 Avoid Trademarked names

There is a need for you to avoid trademarked names when it comes to using a domain name. There are some people that have formed that have created a domain name that is related to some popular domain name but they get burnt for it. I know of someone that creates a domain name https://facekobo.com which is also a social media platform and Facebook has to take him up because of that.

#4 Easy to remember

You will also enjoy a large number of return traffic if you can open a website that is very easy to remember. You should try and use a very easy and simple domain name that is not so difficult for your user to remember. This will ensure that your users can actually come to your website without passing through any search engine.

#5 Selection Popular extension

There are many people that have created blogs and websites and they failed to succeed because they are suing unknown extensions. The most common extension is .com. That is very easy for everyone to remember. If you decide to use some extensions that your users find difficult to remember, you will see that your traffics might be diverted to other people’s websites. If you do not want to lose traffic to others, you have to make sure that you are using popular extensions for your domain.

#6 Match keyword

Also, there is a need for you to also open a domain name based on the keywords that you want to rank for. If you want your site to rank for customer relationship management, for example, it is better to go for a domain name that has to do with CRM. You will notice that within a short while, all things being equal, your website or will start ranking for that particular keyword.

3 Reasons To Buy E-Commerce Website Theme

In many of my previous article, I have talked about some of the reasons why you need to have a concrete plan before you create your e-commerce website. You should know that having a concrete plan before you begin the creation of your e-commerce website will allow you to avoid some of the pitfalls that come with e-commerce website creation. In this article, I want to talk about some of the reasons to buy an e-commerce website theme. Follow me as we are going to look at that in this article.

Before I will delve into what I have in mind to discuss in this article, I want to talk about some of the features that you should look out for when you need to buy an e-commerce website. I believe if you can follow this guideline, It will help you to avoid a situation where you actually purchased a website and you are no longer interested in it because of inadequate or poor features.

Here are some of the features that might interest you.

#1 Basic Layout

Most times, there are some features that a good e-commerce website should have. You should be able to add products, display the price for the product, and add a few descriptions to let others know about the features of the products. There should also be a way of displaying testimonials of what others have to say about that product as well.

#2 Framework

There is a need for you to consider the framework for the entire website. You need to release consider the Content Management System for the e-commerce website. Which Programming Language is been used to create the website? Do you or someone in your organization have the required skills needed to maintain the website?

If you do not have the necessary skills, you may need to outsource the maintenance of that website to a third party.

#3 Navigational structure

Also, it should be noted that no matter how good a website is, visitors to your website will have no option other than to leave the website if they always find it difficult to find what they are looking for. There is a need for you to make sure that the website is designed in such a way that people can easily find what they are looking for.

You should also include a search box for those that would like to search for a specific article or keyword.

#4 shopping cart software

Another feature that should differentiate a normal website from an e-commerce website is the inclusion of shopping cart software. This software will make it easy for your visitors to purchase products and services from the website. You need to make sure that the products are displayed based on characteristics that they have in common.

You should be able to also suggest new products to your audience based on related products that they have shown interest in as well.

There is a need for you to also include brief descriptions that tell people about the product as well as some of the reasons why they need to show interest in that particular product.

#5 Graphics

It is a well-known fact that online users will always show a keen interest in any content that has images and video. That is why you need to ensure that you always include related images and videos on your product pages. This will allow your prospects and customers to see some of the unique dimensions of that product(s) or service(s). This will allow them to decide on whether they actually wanted that product or not.

Having discussed some of the features of an e-commerce website, here are some of the reasons why you should rather buy your e-commerce website instead of building your own e-commerce website from the scratch.

#1 Relatively cheap

I don’t know if you have ever asked a developer to develop an e-commerce website for you, you need to know that the price that they are going to give you will be higher than the price that you can buy such a website, even with more features.

In essence, it makes alot of sense to buy a product rather than decide to develop an e-commerce website. Even if you have specific features that you want your e-commerce website to have, you will always find a specific e-commerce template that can satisfy your needs. At times, you just need to do a slight modification for you to have what you need.

#2 Ready-made navigation

Another unique advantage of buying an e-commerce template over creating a new one is that it already has all the features you are looking for embedded in the website. It comes with ready-made navigations that are easy to implement and modify. That means your modification does not include developing a new navigation system for your e-commerce template. This reduces the time it will take for your website to come alive.

#3 Pre-integrated payment system

Also, you need to know that your website also comes with a good payment system integrated into the entire website. This makes it pretty much easier for customers to pay for products and services. Do not forget what I said in one of my articles, that you should not restrict your customers to a particular payment system. They should have more than one method of paying for products and services.

9 Steps For Planning An E-Commerce Website

In my previous article, I discussed some of the factors that you need to consider when it comes to planning an e-commerce website. In this article, I want to look at some of the steps to follow when planning an e-commerce website. Follow me as we are going to look at that in this article.

#1 Define your objective

The very first thing you need to do when it comes to planning your website is to define your website objective. Before you even contract the Developer that will even design your website, you need to know the reasons why you are creating that website. This will allow you to determine the necessary requirements that your website must have before you can have an effective e-commerce website.

Some of the examples of your objectives can include: generating income from the website, creating a national and global market for your product, increasing customer engagement, promoting good quality and valued customers as well as supporting socio-economic causes through the website.

#2 Define and segment your target audience

As part of the steps that you need to take when you are planning your website, you need to define and segment your target audience. There is a need for you to know the kind of audience that you are expecting on your website. When you have now analysed the specific type of audience that you are expecting on your website, you need to now segment them so that you can now divide the audience based on what your audience has in common.

Here are some of the criteria for segmenting your audience as Demographics, Age, gender, income groups, professional status, education, psychographics, brand consciousness, shopaholics, cosmopolitan, conservative spender, and values quality among others criteria.

#3 Do a competitive analysis

As part of your efforts towards planning your website, you need to do a competitive analysis of the audience on your website. You have to know what they lacked that you can leverage. What are they doing that you can easily do better? This will help you to develop and target an audience from that perspective.

There is a need for you to understand your market in order for you to function well in your marketplace. You also need to take time and check your competitor’s website and understand the key strategies that your competitors are using to drive the audience to their website. You have to understand methods that they are using that you can leverage. This will help you to plan how you can also drive key audiences to your website.

#4 Perform Situational Analysis
Also, as part of your key strategies toward driving a key audience to your website, you need to perform a situational analysis of your key audience. This will allow you to know the method for selling your product. You need to identify your best products that can create wonders in the marketplace. What are the key products and offers that you have that your major audience will likely be interested in?

You also need to identify your advertising and promotional opportunities. What methods can you adopt in order to ensure that you send words out about products and services that you have to offer? This will ensure that you are using the right platform to promote your products and services.

Also, as you are identifying some of your products that can create wonders in the marketplace, you also need to identify some of your products that need attention. This will allow you to create a blueprint on how you can repackage such products in order to make them more acceptable to your target audience.

#5 Create Budget
Definitely, the next major step that you need to do is to create a budget for the entire project. There is a need for you to allocate your budget for building the entire website. You also need to distribute your budget along with different areas such as search engine optimization, promoting and designing of the website, and applicable technologies among others.

You can also find pricing of freelancing services offered on the internet as well as decide on whether the website will be created in-house or through freelancing services.

#6 Create Content Marketing Strategies

There are many people that start an online business but they are not paying much attention to content creation. If you have a website or a blog, there is no way you can succeed if you do not have effective content marketing strategies. You need to make sure that you align your content marketing strategies so that everything can work as a whole. You need to support your owned media with paid and earned media in order to make sense of your content marketing strategies.

You also need to create a business profile for all your social media platforms. When you are doing this, you have to make sure that all the strategies are aligned to work as one. For example, if you are creating a social media profile, you have to use a common name so that it will be easily recognizable to your target audience. They will be able to recall the names without any hindrances.

#7 Hire your team

Also, the job of managing a website is always multi-disciplinary in nature. You need to make sure that you gather an excellent team that can manage different aspects of the website. You have to make sure that you also outsource skills that you know that your internal team will not be able to effectively handle.

Also, you need to define the roles and responsibilities of each of your team members. The main reason for doing that is to ensure that there is no duplication of efforts as far as the roles that members of your team are expected to play is concerned. The roles should not only include the skill sets that you need to create, it should also cover skills that are needed to maintain the site as well.

#8 Define metrics for evaluating results

There is a need for you to also define some of the metrics that you will use in evaluating your results. This will help you to determine whether your business strategy is succeeding or not. It will also allow you to make necessary amendments so that you can improve on what you have achieved already.

Here are some of the metrics that you need to consider which include: website traffic, customer engagement, conversion rates, as well as customer loyalty among others.

#9 Create e-commerce requirements

There is a need for you to also create e-commerce requirements specifications for different tasks. You need to define user and functional requirements, search and content requirements, technical requirements, as well as SEO requirements among others.

This will define what must be achieved for every assignment that has been defined for your project. This can also the management define what should be achieved as the project moves from one stage of achievement to another stage.

Action Point
PS: If you would like to have an online course on any of the courses that you found on this blog, I will be glad to do that on an individual and corporate level, I will be very glad to do that because I have trained several individuals and groups and they are doing well in their various fields of endeavour. Some of those that I have trained include the staff of Dangote Refinery, FCMB, Zenith Bank, and New Horizons Nigeria among others. Please come on Whatsapp and let’s talk about your training. You can reach me on Whatsapp HERE. Please note that I will be using Microsoft Team to facilitate the training.

I know you might agree with some of the points that I have raised in this article. You might not agree with some of the issues raised. Let me know your views about the topic discussed. We will appreciate it if you can drop your comment. Thanks in anticipation.

Fact Check Policy

CRMNIGERIA is committed to fact-checking in a fair, transparent and non-partisan manner. Therefore, if you’ve found an error in any of our reports, be it factual, editorial, or an outdated post, please contact us to tell us about it.

Fact Check Policy