Domain Name and its Importance

"In the era of digitalization, if a business is not online then they are already behind their competition."

A saying that is 100% true. We live in a world where people are interested in buying things, services and everything else online. Nobody likes to step out for doing these simple deeds. Moreover, the COVID situation has worsen the situation for every offline business. This is the perfect time to take your business online and if you want to know more why it is important to take your business online. You can also read about it in this article, why you should move your business online from offline?

Domain Name and its Importance

Moving on, there are people out there who are ready to move online but doesn't know where to begin. Then, we are here to offer some friendly guidance and sort everything out for you. Your online journey begins with a domain name. In this article, we will discuss everything there is to know about a domain name.

What is a domain name?

A domain name is the address people have to type to reach a particular website. Simply put, it is the online web address of a website. Most often people confuse Domain name with website but in real, they are different things. Domain name is the first thing one have to get in order to get a website.

A domain name is unique to a website and once it is bought and registered, no other website can have it.

Why is domain name so important?

As stated earlier, there is a growing need to take your business online and it can't be done without a domain name. From a local shop in your neighbourhood to the biggest MNCs in the world, everyone needs a website to survive in the current trends of the market. To get a website, the very first thing one needs is a domain name. So, let's discuss how can you get a domain name?

Domain name gives instant credibility to your business and puts you at the platform where your potential customers can find you.

How to get a Domain Name?

Domain names are provided by an organization named as ICANN. ICANN stands for Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. However, it is not possible to directly buy Domain names from ICANN, you have to buy a domain name from an approved registrar. There are many approved registrars such as Google, Hostgator, GoDaddy.com, Big Rock and many more.

Things to keep in mind while buying a Domain

1 Book it yourself

The first and foremost important thing to remember while buying a domain is to book it yourself. Don't hire an IT company to do it for booking a domain name as nobody knows your business like you do.

2 Length of Domain name

Another important thing to consider while booking a domain is the length of the domain name. The maximum limit for any domain name is 63 letters but that doesn't mean you have the leverage to use as many letters as you can. It is not feasible as the longer your domain name will be, the harder it will be to remember for your repeating viewers.

We suggest you keep your domain name in the range of 9 to 12 characters as it gives enough scope to put everything in it and will be easy to remember.

3 Use your credentials

One of the most important things to always remember is that one should always book a domain name under their own name, email address, phone number and address. It helps you to move your domain from one IT service provider to other without much fuss. However, if you hire an IT company for the same, there will always be trouble when you would want to roam from one IT company to another.

So, it becomes very essential and advisable that you buy your domain name from the recognised names in this industry such as Bluehost, GoDaddy, HostGator, BigRock, etc.

There are various things that you require to build a website such as hosting, SSL, etc. but it doesn't matter where you these services from as much it matters for buying domain name.

4 What to use

Now, we will discuss what you can use in the domain name and what not to use. A domain name can have alphabets, numbers and hyphen whereas you cannot use special characters such as !@#$%, in domain name.

For Example: If your business name is abcd zzzz, you can try to get domain name such as abcdzzzz.com or abcd-zzzz.com or abcd-zzzz.in. However, you cannot get domain name such as abcd@zzzz.com or abcd&zzzz.com or abcd#zzzz.com.

5 Extensions

The extension that comes attached with your domain name such as .com, .net, .org and so on are known as TLDs which stands for Top Level Domains. In general sense, we call them extensions but they are much more than that. However, it doesn't matter what extension you use for your domain name. The most common domain name extension on internet is .com but do you know what it stands for?

Here are some of the most common extensions that you see on internet are as follows:

• .com which stands for commerce
• .in for India
• .au for Australia
• .co.uk for United Kingdom
• .gov for American Government

A person can book a domain name for minimum 1 year and maximum up to 10 years.

If you are still not confident about anything, then you can always hire an expert to guide you. You can contact one of the leading IT service providers – onTime Infotech to guide you and help you with all your digital needs.

It is important to note that if somebody takes your domain name from you, you don't need to worry about it. You can just register a complaint at Registry.in and they provide them with all documentation. They will ensure that you get your domain back.

At last, when you are done with booking a domain for your business, you should visit who.is to check if the domain is really registered under your name or not and always ensure that you got the confirmation mail from the registrar that your domain name is booked.

There are other aspects from domain name that are related to a website such as hosting and SSL which we will be discussing in our next blogs. So, don't forget to subscribe to our newsletter to get latest updates.