Brand Building is Web Development When setting out to develop a new website for a client the first thing to consider is their brand. Defining a brand is a lot like writing a business plan for an organization. Who's their customer, what is their demographic, current corporate culture and visibility across all media along with consistency regarding these representations. Sometimes a client expects development of a website to be just stamping out code, but it's much more artistry and expertise than that going on to get it right. I wouldn't just start nailing boards together if I were a builder, the site, direction, watershed, parking, permits and a 100 other items need to be considered before breaking ground. The same holds true for web development and I would recommend reading up on these sites listed below about building your brand before developing the wrong site for your business. First, have or get the right domain name. Brandgy.com can clue you in as to why that's so important. Learn about branding your business with these no nonsense guides available through HowToBuildABrand.org These folks out of the UK know what they are doing and it's explained in a way that you can see how it effects other facets of your business. SearchEngineJournal.com puts the technical edge on your brand strategy. Their site maybe a good read for the more technically inclined, but getting found is what it's all about going forward into 2018 and beyond.
Match Your Brand to Your Domain Name A nice case study about Zelle.com expressed on DotWeekly.com about matching your brand to your domain name. There are a couple of other articles about the importance of branding on Dotweekly that a worth the read. And the tag line says it all, It's More Than a Name. With your domain name the goal is to make your brand stronger, not weaker. In addition to branding, author and operator of DotWeekly Jamie Zoch provides some other great info on the domain industry regularly, be sure to follow up on domain movers and start ups. Branding and the relation to your domain name cannot be stated enough for design into your website and the success of your business. If you can, acquire the domain names for your products, too.
There's a lot to branding your business in sync with your domain name and I'm just going to discuss a few key points that begin with the letter A.
Authority and Affinity
Being a brand authority now of days is having a powerful domain name. Powerful domain names are valuable because they are memorable and reflect your business as a leader in your industry. Like it or not we live in the age of information overload, and that's a good thing. As a kid I would ride my bike back and forth to the library trying to juggle a stack of books, knowledge and products from all over the world are now at anyone's finger tips from just about anywhere. How does a customer find, return to, or recommend your business in a sea of 1.7 billion websites all competing for the first page of Google? This is why your domain name matters.
Affinity is the sense of the natural path to your business, a relationship to or the path of the least resistance. If a customer has to remember your domain name or apply a silly extension, not only are they going to have a hard time getting back to you, it's even more difficult for them to refer your company to their contacts. Word of mouth is still a powerful tool in growing your business.
Here's a few great articles on the subject of branding and why your domain name matters: Spend Less on SEO, More on a Memorable Brand by Jamie Zoch and The True Cost of Your Domain Name by Chris Zuiker.
One point I would add to both of these articles is that not acquiring your matching domain name is leaving the door open for your competition to purchase it. Some companies have spent millions just to keep their competition from having them.
Excellent article by Andrew Rosener of Media Options on the brand value of domain names to your business. Andrew makes several key points on why you should own the the matching dot com domain name and what it costs you when you don't.
This is a great read for all C-level executives looking to gain a 15% market share in their niche. Business is online and good domain names will never be any less than they are today. Position your company and your brand for success before your competition snaps up the key generic domains that can impact your sales.
Great domain names are powerful assets that appreciate while generating revenue through brand recognition, as an authority in your field and have so many other marketing advantages that justify the cost. Allocate your advertising budget in the domain name sector for exponential growth and appreciation.
Check out these premium domains names for sale here. SouthernHomes.com FloridaBeachHomes.com DallasTech.com AtlantaConsulting.com LakeStyle.com LongLashes.com YourSiteBuilder.com DatabaseTools.com KeyInsight.com and many more.
Writing is a huge part of building a great website and also the point where most sites fall short. Writing content isn't easy for most developers, they are good with the technical end and years ago with Visual Basic, I remember contests where it would challenge developers to write a function with less words last guy. Kind of like the show Name That Tune, where contestants had to identify a song within a few beats. Writers do a similar thing with landing the hook in the first sentence of a book. The challenge is can you grab the reader's attention and hold it with the first sentence. I've come up with a great one for a book I'll finish someday so I'm not going to reveal it here. One of my favorite comes from British historian and author Stewart Colette in his book Mumba. Here it is, "When you fall in love after the age of thirty, it's usually with someone else's wife." And, the Snoopy classic, "It was a dark and stormy night".
I enjoy writing without all the syntax and code sometimes, simply just to paint the picture with words is a true art, almost a lost art. Programming is art form, too. It's satisfying building a site and seeing it all come together, both form and function. The only drawback to coding is that the language changes often and web programming is an incorporation of many languages. For people outside the industry this would be like having to do your job in Russian and Italian starting next month. It has stabilized in the last 7 years and that's made development very productive.
There's a lot to learn in web development, you have to be a designer, graphic artist, software developer, marketing professional and author to make something worth going to. I am a one man band that enjoys getting it all done. If you're looking to have some work done, I'm looking for a good client. Feel free to call or send a message and let's see what you have in mind.
The key method of developing your business is advertising. Call it integrated marketing with all the other forms of getting your message out, but it still boils down to advertising, which is making it public and memorable.
You may advertise in a trade magazine or on a billboard, but your website is the only form of advertising that's constantly available to your audience. Your domain name is the focal point for all of these marketing components, at the corner stone, and the foundation from where you build your brand upon.
Get a dot com name. Other extensions may gain popularity in 20 years, but for the foreseeable future your marketing efforts will end up in the junk folder. Even in tech where .io and .ai have some traction with start ups, it translates into they're in beta, not ready for primetime. As a decision maker can you back your choice of doing business with an organization that's not really established?
Read my last post about Branding for Authority and Affinity for more information. Here are some premium domain names that I have for sale.
This article is by Kasssey Lee on TLfDInvestors.com originally from GrandSeeds.com
Your domain is the address of your store in the digital world. If consumers remember what you sell and where to buy it, that’s powerful marketing. Your brand helps them remember what you sell, and your domain helps them remember where to buy it. Therefore, you want your domain to be easily remembered. The easiest way to remember your domain is to make it match your brand.
It's never too late to get the matching domain name, it just gets more expensive.