Domain Names

Domain names are the text you type into an Internet browser’s* address bar to go to a specific site on the Internet. Known as a URL, (uniform resource locator) a web address looks something like this: http://www.example.com. The domain name is "Example.com."

Every domain name, or Web page address, has a corresponding numeric code that looks something like this: 22.170.12.250. This numeric code is called an IP (Internet Protocol) address. The format of an IP address is written as four numbers separated by periods, where each number can be from zero to 255. This IP address is how a domain name is recognized by a Web Server.*

But, long numbers, such as IP addresses, are hard for people to remember. Domain names were therefore created to give an "alias" to IP addresses so people can remember and communicate them better. It’s easier, for example, to tell an associate about a Web site called RGVIT.com, versus, say, telling the associate about the same site that’s at 72.32.187.205.

To reserve a domain name, you register it (for a fee) at a domain registrar. GoDaddy.com is the world’s largest domain-name registrar. Other large registrars include NetworkSolutions.com and Register.com. Prices and services vary amongst the registrars. All registrars are connected to the same domain-name database. So, there is no need to check multiple registrars for a domain-name. Hosting companies assist (like Valley IT Solutions) frequently assist with domain name registering, too.

You’ll have a choice of various Top-Level Domains (TLD) to accompany your Web name. The most popular TLD is the suffix ".com" but there are others including .net, .info and .biz. You could get only the .com, or you could buy multiple names. Non-profit groups can get the TLD .org, and educational institutions can get .edu. For a commercial endeavor, it’s important to get a .com address. The .com address is by far the most used and most intuitive for your customers. According to The Wall Street Journal, there are about 46 million .com addresses compared to the next most popular suffixes - .net at 6.7 million and .org at 4.1 million.

Once your register the domain, you can begin the process of creating a Web site. However, if you are not ready for that, you will also be presented with options to "park" it or even to "forward" it.

Parked domain names are registered with the InterNIC (Internet Network Information Center) and therefore reserved, but are not active for Web site or ecommerce service. This is useful if you have a name that you would like to reserve, but do not intend to use immediately.

Domain-name forwarding is useful if the company that provides you with Internet access also gives you free storage space. You could then have Yourname.com forwarded to the served of your Internet company. When someone types your domain name in their browser, it would be forwarded to your Internet server’s space.

You can also register your name as a subdomain. This occurs when a service offers to let you piggyback your name on their own domain name. It would look something like this: Yourdomainname.theirbusinessname.com. Such subdomains are usually free.

Finally, you may be wondering who owns a domain name that is already taken. You can use WHOIS (Whois.com), the Internet’s domain-name registry, to find out who has registered it along with the person’s contact information. Other services also offer you the opportunity to make offers to buy domain names that are already registered.

Getting the right Web address is important, and you should take it as seriously as you did when you created the name for your brick-and-mortar business. Your online identity is important. Most people try to get an online address that mirrors the name of their brick-and-mortar. However, in the brick-and-mortar world there may be more than one business named Bob’s Radiator Shop. Since there can only be one Bobradiatorshop.com on the Internet, it’s possible you will have to consider variations when reserving your domain name.

Terms to Know

Browser: Software program used to view and interact with various types of Internet resources available on the World Wide Web. Netscape and Internet Explorer are two common examples.

Hosting companies: A company that uses a Web server to provide storage space for many Web sites.

Web server: A computer connected to the Internet where Web pages are stored.

Protecting Your Asset

Domain names are addresses. But, of course, a domain name generates traffic, which means it is also a major sales source. The traffic could result from those typing in your name in the address bar of their browser, or it could be from search engines. There are some common sense, easy and inexpensive steps you can take to protect this asset:

Make sure you “own” the name
Don’t just find a domain name that is available and decide to use it as your business name. It’s a good idea to get a trademark clearance opinion from your attorney before beginning use. Don’t infringe on someone else’s mark.

Make sure you get the .com
Don’t think about launching a business without the .com name. If you are successful, you are setting yourself up for a very rude awakening when the owner of your .com address decides to join the affiliate program of your biggest competitor (or a porn site). The goal is to protect your brand and secure the traffic intended for you.

Buy the common misspellings
One recent study found that 13 percent of all traffic was coming from typed-in addresses in the Web browser. This means there is a real opportunity for misspellings to occur. Conduct a search on the misspelled variations of your domain name to get a feel for the frequency of misspellings. The goal is to buy the common misspellings so that domain-name holders running automated “tasting” programs don’t get them first.

Idea starters for service businesses

Whether your business is a salon, an auto repair shop or a coffeehouse, “there’s a lot that you could be doing if you only knew what to do,” to build a Web component, said Charlotte’s Web Consulting CEO Pam Stein.

Keep it simple eat the beginning
A Web site doesn’t have to be huge or robust, Stein said. You need a decent enough Web presence for people to see it’s there. Keep it basic, just get started. You can always add more later.

Everyone
Tell where your business is located, and show how to get there with a map. When are you open? List the hours, including options for private consultations or appointments. As much as possible, list prices or rates. Make it easy for customers to ask questions. Allow customers to easily contact you via phone or e-mail. Ask for client’s e-mail addresses, and use those addresses judiciously to market special items, events and offers.

Services: Medical, Legal, and other services
Provide a secure log-in option for clients to make appointments, check on the status of an order, or retrieve important information.

Hospitality and Restaurants
Post a menu with prices. Display pictures of the food. Show good photos of the dining areas. Is it a formal setting? Will jeans be appropriate? Hotels should post pictures of rooms and amenities. Structure your site to accept reservations. Announce new items and special events. Send e-mails of daily specials to return customers.

Education and Training
Video training offers people more detailed instructions on various skills. Set up a Q&A feature, or answer questions directly. Link to accredited organizations. Send out e-mail notices of classes, training sessions or organized seminar sign-up and start-up days.

Retail
Dialogue with customers about what they’d like to see more of. Conduct votes of rating exercises to see what is the most popular item on the shelf. Focus on seasonal or special events with calendars. For example.- Tax Season or Get your Flu shots.

Care Providers
Build clientele so much the daycare center now has a four-month waiting list. The site includes secure KinderCam video for parents to check in on their kids. Photo galleries, also secure, program announcements and curriculum information and rates round out the site. Other items could include a kid’s art gallery, calendar of local and area family and children’s events and links to activity and learning pages.

Outgoing Relationship
Send a monthly reminder about seasonal needs – “Time to put in antifreeze or get your annual physical.” Create a photo page for proud customers to display special or custom products. Track owners by product make and model, then notify them of recalls and items to check. Provide links to product maker’s sites.

Selling Products Online

It’s important to understand that quickly opening a store on the Web doesn’t mean it will be easier to operate a successful online operation than to run a brick-and-mortar business.

What do I really need to sell products online?
You can sell products online without spending money to buy a domain name*, purchase a shopping cart or creating a Web site. Public marketplaces like eBay, Amazon and Overstock allow merchants to sell products from their sites, Experts say the public marketplaces are typically safe environments for ecommerce rookies to sell products. Think about eBay as ecommerce training wheels! It’s like when you ride a bicycle. You have a lot going on : you are steering, you are pedaling and you are trying to balance. Training wheels take the balance out of the equation, and you can focus on pedaling and steering. Then when up are really good on those things, you take the training wheels off and you work on balance. The same is true for ecommerce.

In ecommerce, a merchant must first find out what he wants to sell and where to locate sources for those products. Then he must focus on merchandising and logistics.

What eBay lets you do is really focus on the product sourcing and logistics and not really worry about demand and merchandising that much. eBay brings the demand, you bring the products, then you have to do the logistics piece. Then, as you outgrow eBay you can really expand beyond that and open your own Web site.

Keep in mind that these public marketplaces are very competitive environments, and there are differences in the shoppers at each site.

A lot of people will actually increase their prices for Amazon because the average Amazon consumer is an early adapter; they are not very price sensitive. They are willing to pat near full price, or even sometimes above full price, if it is something that is a relatively hot product. The average eBay user is at the opposite end of the spectrum.

The eBay buyer is your cheapest kind and the most deal-oriented buyer out there. Consequently, once people have many online channels, they typically look at eBay as one of the last channels they will run a product through. Or they may source end-of-file, severely-discounted products on eBay. The eBay consumer is really looking for 30-50 percent off retail.

Listing products to sell on these sites is easy and relatively inexpensive. Once business owners get a feel for online selling, they might launch their own Web site in addition to selling at one of the marketplaces.

What do I need to create my own Web site?

Creating a Web site to sell products doesn’t have to be a complicated or intimidating process.

There are three options:
1) Chose an all-in-one solution
2) Create your own Web site
3) Hire a Web site developer

All-in-one Solutions

In recent years, all-in-one solutions (often referred to as “hosted solutions”) have made it easy for ecommerce novices to quickly launch a Web site without detailed knowledge of ecommerce or the aid of a Web site developer. An all-in-one solution charges a monthly fee for everything you’ll need to operate a site – you don’t have to assemble and integrate all the pieces to make the online store work.

One disadvantage of using an all-in-one solution is that a merchant may pay fees to the provider based on sales; the more sales, the more fees. Another disadvantage is that when moving from a hosted solution to a more customized Web product, the merchant will essentially throw away the investment in time and money he’s put forward in creating the all-in-one site because it isn’t portable.

Create your own Web site

Even if a merchant has little computer programming knowledge, he can build an online store. It will just be up to a merchant to assemble the necessary pieces.

One of the first pieces to explore is setting on a hosting company. A host is a company that rents space on Web servers to house other people’s Web sites. Many hosts also provide the individual pieces you might need to assemble a basic Web site including shopping carts*, design, etc.

Hosting companies oftentimes provide all those pieces in a single package for a monthly fee. Alternatively, you can purchase them separately and integrate them yourself.

The benefit of creating a store is that you might have more flexibility with design that what is available at an all-in-one solution, and you might be able to integrate a more diverse group of payment options. In addition, if your business requires integration of unique software, that might also be easier if you have the site setup for you.

Beyond that, the most critical part is putting together the elements needed to display products and complete online transactions.

An important element to consider is the shopping cart. There are hundreds of shopping carts, ranging in cost from free to several thousand dollars.

You’ll need a merchant account*to process credit cards (you may be able to use the one you use with your brick-and-mortar business), a payment gateway* and an SSL certificate* to encrypt credit card information. Those pieces integrate fairly easily, but everything must be done correctly to be able to process an online payment.

Hire a Web site Developer

If you are interested in putting all the pieces together, consider finding a Web site developer, who like Valley IT Solutions will assemble your site. These professionals will work with you on a custom-designed option and integrate all the pieces needed to complete the payment process. It’s important to make sure the developer you hire has experience building ecommerce sites and has a familiarity with many of the 400+ shopping carts in the marketplace. Don’t hire the kid next door just because he can build a Web site (many people can build Web sites); you want someone who can help you meet your online business’ goals.

Integrating with your Brick-and-Mortar Operation

Order management software can integrate your existing brick-and-mortar stores with your Web sites operations. You’ll especially want to make certain accounting and inventory functions integrate. Most order management software can also help automate many tasks associated with your online store.

The idea is to help you with all your day-to-day operations. It typically starts with importing orders from your shopping cart or whatever other sales channels you have, building the customer list that you can use for marketing, updating your inventory is that it is checking for out-of-stock items and subtracting what has been sold from your quantity on hand, sending out e-mail confirmations to customers, sending drop-ship orders to vendors and sending other orders to fulfillment centers if you do not do your own fulfillment depending on the size.

Costs for an order management system can range from around $1,000 to $15,000, or more.

If you buy $1,500 worth of software and it saves you even a minimum-wage type of person, you are talking 1,000 percent return on your investment. It does not take saving more than an hour a week to justify a $1,500 investment.

Some shopping carts come with an order management component as part of their all-in-one package. However, keep in mind that if you get involved with a cart that can scale to meet your future needs, you’ll have to find a new order management system if you switch from an all-in-one provider to your own site.

The order management and the fulfillment pieces are really key to consider in your ecommerce operations to be successful in today’s Internet market.