When you have decided to have your own website, e.g. for personal reasons, to build a business or just to get experience building a website, you have to make three decisions:
- Choose a free or paid platform.
- Select a specific website hosting platform with templates and add-ons.
- Pick a hosting company, and build your own site.
These three decisions lead to a variety of choices, and there are very many website building platforms and websites. If you just want to get your ‘standard’ website up and working quickly, you are happy looking like everyone else and have no experience (or desire to learn) then go form a free or paid platform. The trick is to figure out which one is right for you.
Because 50% to 80% (dependant on who you believe and what they are selling) of the world’s website are built on WordPress, I would recommend that even with a free hosting package you should choose a WordPress platform. Believe me I have been building websites since late 1990 (yes they were around then), so I always recommend that you should KIS (“Keep It Simple”). This choice gives you the most control over your website in the short term and you will thank me for recommending this option even though it seems daunting initially.
But before you do anything choose a domain name that will suit your business or objective. Picking a domain name will be your biggest stumbling block and always causes the most frustration with anyone looking to building a website. Why?
- Most good domain names have been taken.
- It’s hard to think of an address that’s easy to remember.
- Picking keywords can be really confusing.
Like the name of your business most of the time sent is picking a domain name, but look at it from 2 options:
- Pick a ‘keyword’ specific domain.
- Pick a domain name that directly relates to your ‘brand’.
How to Pick Your Domain Name
My advice is to pick a branded domain name, here are reasons why:
- It’s easy to remember- visitors will want to revisit your website so give them something easy to remember.
- It can be “rebranded” – the disadvantage of a keyword-centric address is that you’re stuck with that name – what happens if you want to change prodcts and services on your site.
- The advantage of a branded domain is that you can change products and services without changing the name.
Your plan is to generate lots of traffic with different types of content (text, audio and video). Use a simple address and you’ll simplify this process – remember users will have to type the hyperlink into a search engine..
Help your visitors by having a branded domain name. Remember, this is a website you’ll have for years to come, so spend some time carefully considering this choice.
In the next blog I will explain how to get your site up and running in a few hour – http://ictexecs.com/blog/2014/09/15/building-website-easy-way/
