 Yellow Pages used to be the fastest portal to your town's goods and services. Now that wires have conquered the world, all you need is Google. That's an important concept for small business owners everywhere to understand—if you're not on the Web, you are losing potential customers.
Web site construction isn't a task to take lightly. You will have to develop a comprehensive game plan to jump-start and then protect your online investment, and you can begin by deciding on a first-rate Web site name.
 The Name Game
Domain names, the geek-friendly term for Web site names, are often the first thing that a customer sees when he first spots your business. Understanding the restrictions and meanings behind possible domain names will help you devise a name that's precise, concise, and appropriate for your target audience.
You already know that most Web sites end with .COM. That .COM extension is one of numerous top-level domains, which are the most general part of a Web site's address. The .COM generally denotes a site that's used for commercial purposes, although many private users set up their sites using a .COM domain. There are numerous other top-level domains, such as .NET (for network-related organizations), .ORG (nonprofit organizations),
.EDU (universities or colleges), .GOV (government), and .MIL (military), among others.
Country specific domains also exist to clarify a site's origin. For example, residents of Denmark may use a .DK extension, and Canadian residents may employ a .CA extension, and it's becoming more common to see the .US (United States) country extension. |
Network Solutions is one of the oldest registrars on the Web. This company also offers steeply discounted pricing for registration services. | The best domain names are short, memorable, end with the super-popular .COM domain, and contain no dashes. If someone already bought the .COM name you wanted, you can try the name with a .NET or .BIZ extension instead. If that doesn't work, you may want to consider using dashes in the name, but do so only as a last resort, as there will always be users who forget to include a dash or aren't sure where the dash goes, and as a result arrive at a different Web site. For that reason your domain name also needs to be easy to pronounce and difficult to misspell. To prevent misspellings, avoid words and numbers that sound alike. For example, it's easy to confuse ToLive.com, 2Live.com, and TooLive.com.
There are also technical restrictions for domain names. You can include only letters, numbers, and dashes (-) in a name, and you can use only 63 total characters. In addition, you can't use spaces or begin or end a site name with a dash.
Registration How-To
There are hundreds of companies, called registrars, which can help you register a domain name. Two popular registration sites include Network Solutions (www.networksolutions.com) and Dotster.com (www.dotster.com), both of which offer significant registration discounts.
When you pay for a domain name, you can register the name for one year or several years. Single-year registrations typically cost less than $35, and multiyear registrations cost significantly more.
Register now. Let's assume you are ready to register your domain name. We will walk you through the registration process at Network Solutions.
Let's say you want to start a Web site called Isellflowers.com, so you type the name in the provided text box, select the .COM check box, and click Search. On the next page, the site tells us that this domain name is already registered. Click the Back button on your browser to try again.
You could keep searching for individual domain names, but it's faster to search for multiple names simultaneously. Click the Search For Multiple Domain Names link. In the blank text box, type a few alternate domain names, and press ENTER after each one. Try Isellblossoms, Isellprettyflowers, Wesellflowers, and FresherFlowers. Click the extensions you want to try and click Search. |
Great Domains is a company that buys domain names and sells them to anyone willing to pay extra for a really memorable name. Some names cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. | The results indicate that Isellblossoms and Isellprettyflowers are available, but the catchier Wesellflowers and Fresherflowers are both taken (although the .NET versions are still available; more on this later). The names that are already registered have a Backorder Now link next to them. If you really, really want a specific domain name, you can pay NetworkSolutions, or other services, such as SnapBack, from SnapNames (www.snapnames.com), to grab the name once it's available. These services aren't cheap, and unfortunately, it could be years (or never) before a registration expires.
You decide that Isellblossoms.com is a satisfactory domain name. Clear the check boxes next to the domain names you don't want and click Continue.
Registration options. The next page offers numerous add-ons and features that you may want to purchase as part of your domain name registration. The first option is private registration, which costs $5 per year. This makes your registration anonymous, meaning no one can look up your site's registration information in the Whois database (see our What Is Whois? sidebar for more information) to obtain your name, phone number, or address. We recommend paying for private registration. That way spammers or other obsessive types can't abuse your contact information.
The next option is for email inboxes. Network Solutions offers email inboxes with 10MB capacity at a rate of $2 per mailbox, per month. For an additional cost, you can also increase the capacity of each mailbox. You can also sign up for Web site hosting with multiple pages for $1.50 per page, per month.
If you want to, you can pay for Web Forwarding and a SureList feature. Web Forwarding helps forward disparate domain names to a central site, so if you own Isellblossoms.com and Isellviolets.net, both names take users to the same site. SureList is a feature that claims to help get your site listed at the top of results when surfers use certain search engines, and may or may not be useful depending on your budget and needs.
Potential Registration Problems
Before you complete a domain name registration, you should understand some setbacks that befall business owners who don't take their Web presence seriously. Making mistakes could hamper efforts to grow your business online.
When you finally settle on a domain name you may want to consider registering similar site names to help redirect users who misspell or mistype your site's name. For example, Yahoo.com also owns Yaho.com, so if a surfer mistakenly omits the second "o" in Yahoo, she will still see a link that sends her to the correct site.
If the .COM name you want is taken, but .NET or .BIZ versions of the name are available, you will probably still want to think of a new name. Creating a site with similar content but with a less popular extension will confuse customers and could also spark accusations of trademark infringement from the .COM owners. To avoid such problems, register a unique .COM name, and register the .NET and .BIZ versions, too. If you have the capital, go ahead and register the .ORG and .US in your name as well, just for the peace of mind.
If you are very concerned about public relations, you may also want to consider preempting potential public relations problems by registering insulting site names. Everyone knows how to get to Microsoft's (www.microsoft.com) site, and disgruntled customers don't need much imagination to find MicrosoftSucks.com (www.microsoftsucks.com), a site where users vent their frustrations about various topics, including Bill Gates' company.
Don't pay squat. Remember that you don't have to start a Web site when you register a domain name. That fact gave rise to cyber-squatting—where speculators buy domain names with the hope that they can resell those names at a substantially higher price.
It's easy to see if a cyber-speculator already registered the domain name you want. When you type the domain name in your Web browser, you will see a page with an offer to sell. In these situations there are no set prices (even if there's a minimum listed), and the only negotiation factors are your willingness to pay and the domain owner's desire to make a few bucks. You can bet that the lowest selling offer will be significantly higher than a typical registration fee.
There are services such as Great Domains (www.greatdomains.com) which stockpile and sell some of the most unforgettable site names, and they're not cheap. For example, as of press time, the domain name Beef.com was selling for $250,000. Rick McCarty, executive director of issues management for the NCBA (National Cattlemen's Beef Association) said, "NCBA attempted to purchase the Beef.com domain name a number of years ago after we had acquired Beef.org. The owner of that domain asked a price that we considered to be outrageous." What's more, an animal rights group received temporary permission to use the name and began posting anti-beef industry materials. That's just one example of why it is a good idea to register similar domain names.
Registration Hesitation
Don't wait to claim your domain name and risk running into these kinds of problems. With every passing day, there are fewer ideal names from which to choose. Get started on your Web site now, and soon you can give your goods and services the visibility they need to attract more customers through the limitless power of the Internet. 
by Nathan Chandler
The Web's Address Book
Computers across the Internet don't necessarily identify your site, called Isellblossoms, by that name. Instead, those computers locate the site by using an IP (Internet protocol) address, which looks something like this: 63.70.164.22.
It's awfully hard to remember that numeric address if you're a customer who wants to buy flowers. Fortunately, the DNS (Domain Naming System) lets us connect to computers using domain names, too. The DNS works through servers scattered throughout the Internet, and these servers' primary task is to translate IP addresses to domain names, and vice versa, to help surfers connect to the sites they want to see. |
Thwart Cybersquatters
Your company, IsellBlossoms, shoots from middling startup to huge corporation in a year, and then you find out some huckster purchased the .org and .net versions of your domain name. Now you want those domain names so that you can redirect surfers to your .com site, but how do you get the names away from the cybersquatter?
In 1999, Congress passed the Anti-Cybersquatter Consumer Protection Act, which helped trademark holders protect their rights from squatters. With this act a company may be able to file an injunction that stops the squatter from using the name, seek monetary damages for improper use of the trademarked name, or force a squatter to transfer the domain name to them.
To so do, the trademark holder must show that the squatter is acting in bad faith in regards to the domain name, and that name similarities might confuse consumers. You can show bad faith in numerous ways: By demonstrating that the squatter doesn't offer goods or services related to the name, showing evidence that the squatter hoped to profit from the similarity of the name, or disclosing an offer from the squatter to sell the name. There are other ways to show bad faith, too, and if need be, a lawyer can help you sift through the possibilities.
One recent cybersquatting case involved actor Pierce Brosnan, who appealed to the WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) for help in taking Piercebrosnan.com from Jeff Burgar, a prolific cybersquatter. Brosnan convinced WIPO that Burgar used the domain name to profit from Brosnan's celebrity, and in late 2003, Burgar relinquished control of the name. However, the WIPO is notoriously erratic in its judgments, so if you want to protect your brand identity, it's best to register similar domain names to prevent confusion and to foil profiteering schemes. |
What Is WhoIs?
Whois is a database containing information about registered domains. When anyone registers a new domain name with a registrar, that site updates the Whois database with the new domain's name, the registrant's name, address, phone number, and email address as well as the domain's creation and expiration dates.
If you need to get in touch a Web site's owner and you can't seem to do it through the site itself, you may need to use Whois. To do so, you can load any number of registration sites, such as Network Solutions, and click Whois. Type the domain name and extension of the site and click Search. Remember that you should directly contact a registrant only in extreme circumstances, for example, if you try to repeatedly unsubscribe from a newsletter but the site keeps sending you unwanted messages.
Federal law prohibits people from misusing the information they find on Whois. However, mere law won't necessarily stop spammers and stalkers from abusing Whois, a good reason to sign up for private registration when you buy your own domain name.
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Don't Forget To Re-register
There are a million reasons you might forget to re-register your domain name, from technical problems to corporate mismanagement. Understanding the domain name deletion process will let you plot a course of action if this happens to your company.
There are four steps to the domain deletion process. The name expires, and the registrar may send the delete command to the registry anywhere from 1 to 45 days, and usually this happens later rather than sooner. Once the registrar sends the delete command, the name goes to RGP (redemption grace period), which lasts 30 days. After that, the name is deleted during a five-day waiting period, and finally the name becomes available to the general public.
The good news is that if you have an active site and your domain name expires, you shouldn't have a problem re-registering. That's because in most cases you'll know there's a problem when your site goes down, and you can have your tech guru fix the problem by re-registering.
Hopefully the expiration won't get to the deletion phase. Registrars really want your business, and they will send repeated emails reminding you to re-register. The problem is that often spam filters stop these emails, or the messages don't reach the correct people. The point is, don't depend on your registrar for help.
If the worst happens and another business grabs your domain name, you might be able to buy it back (at a dear price), or you can consult a lawyer. Keep in mind that possession is nine-tenths of the law, though, so keeping a stranglehold on your domain name is the best guarantee.
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Yellow Pages used to be the fastest portal to your town's goods and services. Now that wires have conquered the world, all you need is Google. That's an important concept for small business owners everywhere to understand—if you're not on the Web, you are losing potential customers. 
