A domain name is the cornerstone of any online strategy for your business. It gives you an address to call your own in a changing online world. In this howto guide we’ll look at how you can register your own company domain name and throw in a few tips for good measure.

What is a Domain Name?

As a quick recap, a domain name is a name to help people to easily remember Internet addresses. If you’ve ever visited www.google.com or www.facebook.com then you’ve used a name. Both are domain names as like www.onezeroone.com.au. These names are far easier to remember than the string of numbers that are used by the supporting Internet systems.

What Do I Need?

So, what do you need to get a domain name registered? Not a lot really. You’ll need:

• A Domain Name Registrar – a company responsible registering and managing domain names
• A credit card and contact details to pay for the registration
• In some countries you may need some extra details to complete your registration e.g. in Australia you require an Australian Business Number (ABN) if you’re trying to register an Australian address like “.com.au”.

What’s the Process?

Registering a domain name is a pretty straightforward, three-step process:

1. Find a Domain Name registrar
2. Find a Domain Name that’s not taken
3. Register your Domain Name

1. Finding a Registrar

Finding a Domain Name registrar is as simple as searching for “domain name registrar” in your favourite search engine. However, due to the sheer volume of Domain Name registrars on the Internet, picking one can be a little daunting.

The other challenge is finding one with the right price and reputation. Domain Name registration is a commodity business so most registrars are priced very similarly. Picking one with the right price is easy but getting a registrar with a good reputation is another question. There are a few things your can do here to work out if the Domain Name registrar you’ve picked will give you good service:

• The easiest – Ask a friend or someone who has some recommendations. I’ve put some registrars that I’ve used and that have a decent reputation below.
• Check the ICANN accredited domain registrars. ICANN are responsible for governing the use of Domain Names across the globe and through their accreditation can give you some indication of the quality of the service you’ll get from a registrar.
• Check your favourite search engine for the domain registrar’s name combined with “problem” or “issues” or other words that may help you work out whether they have a history of service quality issues.

Some countries, such as the United Kingdom and Australia have registrars (and sometimes registration criteria) specific to their country domains (e.g. .co.uk for the United Kingdom or .com.au for Australia). If you need these domains then you’ll need to register a domain through one of those countries registrars.

Tip – Now, if all that’s a little hard here’s a starting point. You might want to try out “Godaddy.com” for most domain registration types (e.g. .com, .net etc). They’ve been around for a while and are well recognised. For cheap and cheerful Australian domain name registrations you can try “crazydomains.com.au”. I’ve used both of these companies without any problems. I’ve also used a couple of companies where the relationship went sour – Registerfly and eNomCentral (Now Bulkregister). It’s relatively easy to move your domain to another registrar if the need arises but it’s better to prevent in my book.

2. Finding an Available Name

Before you can register a domain name, you need to find one that’s not taken.

Before we get into finding available domain names, it’s worth touching on the criteria for creating a domain name. A domain name is not case sensitive (i.e. ONEZEROONE.com.au is the same as onezeroone.com.au) and can only consist of any combination letters, numbers and hyphens (i.e. a-z, 0-9, -) up to 253 characters long. In practice, the simpler (and shorter) the domain name the easier it will be to use.

Next, you’ll need to decide on a name. If you’ve already got a business, then you’ll want to get something as close as possible to your company name. If you don’t have a company name it’s possible that your company name may be influenced by the domain names that are available.

Once you have a name in mind (or a few), simply enter the details on your new favourite domain name registrars website to see if it’s available for registration as shown below.

Once you’ve entered a name and searched, you’ll get a page that looks something like the following.

You can run through this process a number of times to work out what the available Domain Name options are.

Tip – To make your Domain Name easier to use day-to-day make sure it meets a few different criteria like being easy to spell, reducing when telling someone over the phone (spell it out loud to check) and limiting numbers (like onezeroone – when said to someone it could be words or numbers and can be confusing – I should practice what I preach!)

Tip – A Domain Name specific to the country(s) that you’re conducting business in hold a better reputation that an generic .com domain (e.g. .com.au for Australia). If possible, you should register your country domain and some other alternatives to your domain name across different country domains e.g. mydomain.com.au (Australia), mydomain.com (US), mydomain.co.uk (United Kingdom) to help protect your domain in as many places as once.

Tip – You should also consider registering domains for any products or trademarks that you hold so as to capture a hold on the domain names relevant to your business.

3. Registering You Name

This is the simple part. Just follow the directions for payment and provide credit card details. Domain names for .com should be in the range of US$10-$20 per year but this varies per provider. The price also varies for localised domain registrations (e.g. .com.au in Australia).

Make sure that you provide accurate contact details. As mentioned in the previous article about the critical nature of domain names to your business, you need make sure the registrar can contact you in times of need (e.g. Domain Name renewal notifications!)

Tip – Make sure you read the subsequent screens through to payment once you’ve picked the domain name(s). Many domain name registrars “Value Add” through the payment process and offer services like email, website hosting and other services that you may inadvertently add to your bill at the end if you’re not observant. Just make sure that you understand what the check boxes are doing in the subsequent payment pages.

Wrap up

Well, hopefully that gives you a good introduction into how to register a domain name for your business. Simple really.

Please feel free leave a comment if you’ve got any questions or any other tips that may help others. Best of luck!

• How important is your domain name to your business?
• Do you maintain direct control over it?

Honestly, I was a little concerned so I thought I’d give a rundown of the importance of Domain Names in a digital age.

What is a Domain Name?

First things first. If you’ve ever been to “www.google.com” or “www.facebook.com” or sent an email to someone then you’ve already used a domain name. A domain name is the human readable name you use to access places on the Internet. It was created to make it easier for people to remember locations by the use of words rather than the numbers which computer systems use to find each other.

What does a Domain Name do for my business?

A domain name allows a business to register their “virtual street address”. It gives you an address where your business can reside in the online world. More importantly, it gives you an address that you can control. As those in the retail business know, your address means everything. In the online world, your address is important no matter what industry you’re in.

Why is a Domain Name important to businesses?

It’s a bit difficult to continue the analogy of a street address here but what would you do if you arrived at the office or warehouse one day and your couldn’t get in? If someone had locked the doors, blacked out the windows and taken down all your signage? When you try to find out what’s going on you’re informed that you haven’t paid your rent.

There are a number of cases where companies have forgotten to renew their domain names. There are even some notable cases where big companies like Hotmail and flavour of the month Foursquare have let their domain registration slip.

Protecting yourself from administrative issues or potential errors is only part of what makes a domain name very important for businesses.

These days there are many places that your business may be able to have an online presence outside of your domain including Facebook and Twitter, however, as we’ve seen in the past, the Internet and technology move at a frightening pace that no one can predict what it will be like 3 years let alone 5 or 10. In this type of scenario, it is essential that your business have some continuity when the landscape around it changes. Having your own domain name provides this.

These are just two examples of why your business should make sure it knows what’s happening with its domain name. There are also others that affect marketing but I wont get into those here. What I’m saying here is that no matter what type of business you are, if you have a domain name you should be in direct control of it. Given how easy it is to do, there’s no excuse for the situations described above to occur.

What can I do to take control of my Domain Name?

Enough of the fear. There are some simple, but important steps you should take to make sure that you’re comfortable you have the right control of the cornerstone of your business’ online identity:

• Make sure you know who your Domain Name registrar is and the details for managing it’s details and getting support.
• Make sure your contact details are your own for your domain to make sure you’re contactable if anything to do with your domain name changes. In particular, so they can let you know when your renewals are due.
• Sometimes you can register your domain name with your web hosting company. I would recommend making sure your domain is registered with registrar independent of your hosting company in case there is ever any problems with your web host. For example, if your web host went bust, it would be a lot more difficult to get your website running again if they owned your domain name as well.
• If you’re registering a new domain, do some research on reputable domain name registrars. If you’ve picked someone you think will meet your needs, Google their name with “complaints” or “problems” to see what type of track record they have. While you’re at it, make sure your registrar is ICANN (central body tasked with governing domain names) accredited before using them.

Easy stuff.

What about “Joe”?

Well, Joe agrees with the above so he’s trying to take control of his domain name now. We’ll continue with Internet Basics for Business when he does and he’ll be in control of his own online destiny. Such a happy ending.

Checking in is selling it a little short.  From the email:

Hi Jason

Virgin Blue has launched a revolutionary, innovative new process to check-in and board on domestic flights via a traveller’s mobile called “Check-Mate”. You no longer have to rush to the airport and join the queues, or worry about leaving your on-line boarding pass on the printer, now everything is in your pocket.

Easy Check-in

The mobile app for Virgin Blue’s Check-Mate system is the 1st in Australia which lets you check-in from anywhere, when travelling between Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. No need to be at your computer, your BlackBerry™ or 3G phone does it all.

Electronic Boarding Pass

With Virgin Blue Check-Mate you don’t even need to print out your boarding pass. You’ll get a 2D Bar code sent to your BlackBerry™ or 3G phone, which is scanned at the gate.

Book or change your flight

Virgin Blue Check-Mate also allows you to book and change your flight, at the touch of your screen on your BlackBerry™ or 3G phone.Why not give it a go now?Access on any 3G mobile at mobile.virginblue.com.au or download the app for Check-Mate from blackberry.com/appworld.

Happy flying,

The Velocity Team.

I think this is an exciting step for an airline to take.  It’s actually an exciting step for mobile based commerce in general and is, as mentioned in their first line, a step towards eliminating the need for a computer for day to day items.

I’m surprised it’s taken big business as long as it has (excluding maybe the banks).  As of 2008 Australia already had more mobile phones than people so it would seem strange not to be using mobile phones for business transactions.  Granted, I’m not sure how many of these are “Smart Phone” with the capability to use this service to it’s full extent but that number is sure to grow.  This is squarely targetted at those that will take advantage of it though.  Affluent and upwardly mobile “Smart Phone” people.

It would be interesting to be a fly on the wall (or squeezed between the pages) of the business case for this one.  Maybe it went something like this:

Benefits
$XXX – More people booking because don’t need a computer and can do on the fly (no puns allowed in a business case)
$XXX – Reduced boarding pass printing costs and associated maintenance of boarding pass printing machines
$XXX – Reduced airport queuing times due to customers not requiring to be in the terminal to check-in etc
$XXX – Reduced costs of customer service staff at airports
$XXX - Improve goodwill through convenience and eco benefits

Costs
$XXX – Mobile Website development
$XXX – Plugging it into the existing booking managment system
$XXX – Project Management
$XXX – Change management
$XXX – Training

Risk – None really*
* What’s risky with mobile phone commerce?

As a bit of very basic reverse engineering I took a look at the possible savings just from reducing the printing costs.  According to the 2008 Virgin Blue annual report they carried about 16.7 million passengers.  All of those people would have required a boarding pass so that’s roughly 16.7 million of those little colour boarding passes.  Let’s assume each boarding pass print costs, all inclusive, 5c (paper, ink, maintenance, etc.).  That’s $835k in boarding pass printing costs (Sounds low to me but let’s go with it).  Given most of those passengers would be business passengers, it follows that a large proportion of those people use Smart Phones.  Let’s stay conservative and assume 25% of passengers are Internet capable Smart Phone toting business or upwardly mobile types.  That’s around a $200k saving in printing costs.  So, without the other potential benefits factored in or any of those fancy return calculations, you’re looking at spending less than $200k to develop this service.  That’s definitely achievable!  It’s also based on a lot of assumptions and hot air but it gives an idea of the thought process they may have gone through.

In all seriousness though.  I think this is a great step towards improving the facilities for business transactions through mobile phones. The challenge as Smart Phone usage grows for business transactions will be catching the eye of your average Smart Phone using Joe and Jane on the street.

The following is a link to an interview created by For Immediate Release conducted with Matt Chagnon who is a communications specialist of Public Service of New Hampshire.

The For Immediate Release interview with Public Service of New Hampshire.

You can play the interview straight from the webpage by clicking on the play button.

For Immediate Release is a great podcast if you’re interested in getting your weekly dose of information about how communications is being affected by Internet technologies.