Looking professional and protecting your brand is easy and inexpensive.
Web domains are the addresses of the connected world. They appear on websites and in emails. They can forward visitors to social media sites. They are a business asset, creating presence, a professional-looking brand, and have an enormous influence on how people find a business online. Sites like Google and ChatGPT use domains to rate a website’s usefulness and credibility.
If your business still uses that @gmail.com email or shares its web domain with your host (for example, 1stopprint.myhost.co.za), it’s time to get your own domain.
Why get a business domain?
Getting a domain is a real business decision, not a nice-to-have. A domain resonates how seriously people should take a business, especially on its signboards, vehicle liveries, business cards, search results, ads, and social media. Here are good reasons to get a proper web domain for your business:
- It creates credibility: Customers respond positively to a proper business domain. It’s more memorable because they can directly recall the brand name as opposed to a sub-domain or free email account. 24% of small businesses in the US have a domain and to build brand awareness.
- Brand protection: The CIPC (Companies and Intellectual Property Commission) strongly recommends that a registered business gets its brand domain name. It stops someone else from registering and using the domain, adds significant credibility to CIPC registrations, and helps with brand disputes.
- Multiple business email accounts: Assigning emails to different business areas, departments, or employees looks professional and is more efficient. For example, having distinct sales and accounting email addresses makes it easier to separate managing new customer leads from chasing invoice payments. Business domains also make it simpler to register and manage business-dedicated social media accounts.
- Multi-domain marketing: Many businesses take advantage of affordable domains. They register domains for marketing campaigns, their company slogans, or geographic areas like .joburg or .capetown. These can direct visitors to different websites or the main business website.
Tips for selecting a domain
Choosing and registering domains isn’t complicated. All you need to get started is use a trusted domain registrar such as Vodacom Business, and it can cost less than R100 annually.
Get started with these tips to select and use the best domain for your business:
- Contact the professionals: Using a domain registration partner will make it easy and fast to decide on a domain, register it, and link it to your email or website. Vodacom Business has helped thousands of local businesses register their domains, so contact them today for a free callback.
- Use a domain search engine: Your desired domain might not be available. Use the official local domain search engine to see what is available at https://whois.registry.net.za/. Try different names and top-level domains (see below).
- Choose a name: The domain name will most likely be your business brand. You want it to be memorable, so keep it short. If your company is called ‘One Stop Printing Services’, then ‘onestopprint’ or ‘1stopprint’ would be good choices. You cannot put spaces, punctuation, or special characters (such as ! or &) in a domain name, but you can add dashes (-).
- Find a top-level domain (TLD): The TLD is the segment behind your domain. In 1stopprint.co.za, the ‘co’ is for ‘commercial’ and ‘za’ is for South Africa. There are many such domains, such as .com, .org, .biz, including specific places (.joburg) and functions (.shop). What you select determines a domain’s availability and price. For example, a .com is more expensive but ideal if your company has customers across the world. A domain with co.za shows that you are a South African business. You can also register domains for different countries (such as co.uk for Britain or com.au for Australia).
- Combine your domain and hosting: All good website, email, and business productivity providers include domain registration and hosting services. Talk to a hosting service and get a bundle deal that delivers real value.
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