Many New Zealand businesses are reluctant to take their business to the web. Most brick and mortar businesses fail to realise the power of having an online prescence and more importantly attracting new customers through their website.

Nowadays, people like to jump online and search for the services they need. Fetching the yellow pages out of the kitchen cupboard is too much of a hassle so being able to go to Google and search for the local painter or plumber will yield better results.

Most people are aware of such businesses that digress from building a website. “I rely on word by mouth advertising” or “I have built my reputation up I don’t need a website”.

These people will get left behind. New immigrants, new neighbours, new people moving to the surrounding areas will not have any such information about your business and therefore those businesses will be missing out on a heap of new customers.

So the next challenge once you have set your mind on setting up a website is picking a domain name. The very first port of call. To the average business owner this may appear like the easy part but in fact it is not. Most business owners will choose a name that quite frankly people will not remember. Unless you have built a reputation on branding your name right from the start you are going to find it hard pressed to pick a domain name that will benefit you in the long run.

For example: Jim a plumber living in Auckland may want to call his domain name JimsPlumber.co.nz but AucklandPlumber.co.nz will yield better results.

Why?

When people search for a plumber in Google they usually type in the search term and locality.

What does this mean?

JimsPlumber.co.nz will not even feature in the results of Google if he had a website under this name. Unless he spent a fortune on SEO he has fat chance of appearing the search engine.

However!

If he chose AucklandPlumber.co.nz he will more than likely appear somewhere near the top of the listings so long as he has done some SEO.

Natural listings from the search engine are free. You can gain hundreds of visitors to your website just by picking the right domain name. Don’t make the mistake like most businesses do and pick an obscure name. Choose your domain name wisely and you will reap the rewards!

Out of interest you may pick more than one domain name. In the example above you could buy JimsPlumber.co.nz and AucklandPlumber.co.nz and redirect them to your website. The sky is the limit.

So go forth and pick a domain name. It is exciting and worthwhile your effort!