Building an online business - You need a brand-able website and domain - Part 2

Building an online business - You need a brand-able website and domain - Part 2

When it comes to making a business successful, you will need to have a nice looking design as well as a domain that can be remembered easily.  These both fall under the branding stage of building your online business, and it's not too difficult to do.  There are so many people who will fail at this stage because they think they have a great design and an amazing domain name, but they actually fall short (very short) of amazing lol.

To get a great design on a budget I usually suggest a premium WordPress theme from themeforest since they are always under $100.  Usually you can get a really good one for $79, and if it's on sale you can sometimes get it for $40   The beauty of this is that you don't even have to get super targeted with your WordPress theme since you can customize everything you want after you upload it to your hosting.  What you'll want to do is find a responsive theme that has a built in page builder, or gives you one for free with the purchase, so that you can easily customize everything.  You'll also want to filter out any new sellers because you don't know yet if they are going to be good.  I'm sure there are loads of great sellers just starting out on themeforest, but you shouldn't be taking chances if this is your first stab at setting up an online business.  The less snags you have in your first attempt at being successful online, the better

As for putting your own images on the theme, you can design them yourself or do what I do and subscribe to billionphotos.com for a massive amount of ideas and images for your website   They're much cheaper than their competitors and they have a lot of other websites you can use as well

Now you don't have to go with WordPress, even though it's super easy to work with and a lot of programmers can help you out for fairly cheap.  You can choose to go super custom and spend thousands of dollars, but I would highly recommend you take your time when hiring a company to do the work.  Never look for the cheapest offer because that will usually get you the cheapest looking work.  It took me years to find the best programmers and designers for my websites, I actually went through dozens of "experts" to get my final team together. 

How to spot a shabby designer or team
The Yes Men: 
A company that always says "Yes we can do that" is one to be avoided.  This is because they probably don't know what they are doing but they will try to learn as the go.  You want to find a team or individual that will respond honestly.  Send them dozens of questions and if they come back saying Yes to 15 of them and the other 5 responses are them talking about how they can't really do it, but know how to do a work around, this is the type of company you should keep in your back pocket. 

Even though the company openly said they couldn't do all of the work you wanted, they should still be considered.  I would rather work with an honest design company than one who will lie to me and give me excuses later on.  Even if they can't do 5 of the 20 tasks you need done, you can always find someone else to complete the 5 tasks which will give you a full service team to go back to whenever you need something done


Your Domain Search
As for your domain, the best thing to do is make it short and sweet all while being easily identifiable by your target market.  Short and sweet is always a great thing to do, but getting people to identify it right away is golden!  Not too many people will be able to do this, I can't even do it every time, but when it does happen it feels too good to be true.

I recently purchased a domain for my new eCommerce website and it fit my motto, slogan, game plan, target market, and everything else.  I thought it was too good to be true, but I got it   I actually bought it 4 months ago because I had the idea back then and didn't want to risk letting someone else swipe up this domain for a few bucks and try to sell it to me for a few thousand haha.  My domain is short and sweet as well which is easily brand-able since it matches my niche and target market very well   My domain is actually a combination of 2 words and is only 7 characters long.  It's easy to say by anyone who speaks English, or any other language actually, and should be easier to brand because of this.

Try to avoid domains with ending and starting letters that match up.  A few examples of this would be:

• Smarttime.com
• Goldennugget.com
• Poppuppies.com
• kiddays.com

I avoid these because they usually don't roll off the tongue as easily.  If someone can't say your domain with ease, it's unlikely that they will actually talk to their friends about your website.

Other types of domains to avoid are ones that are similar to the ending and starting letters, but this time they just have ending and starting sounds that are similar, such as:

• Poshshopping.com
• Phonenoise.com
• Computerturbulance.com
• Petetches.com

I avoid these even more than the first examples because they are harder to identify in the address bar and people will likely mess them up as they type them. 



In Conclusion:
If you need a design and don't have any skills to do it on your own, I would recommend a premium WordPress theme from ThemeForest.  If you don't want to go that route and you want something more custom, you need to pick apart every person you are thinking about hiring until you weed out all the yes men and the lowest bids.  As for the domain, you need to keep it short, sweet and easily identifiable by your target market.  I would take my time when choosing a domain because it's more difficult to switch your domain and get people to follow you over than it is to switch your design and keep your client loyalty


Remember to follow me!
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Thanks!

Razzy