The online fashion retailer ASOS recently posted a 35% increase in sales for the financial year ending March 2010. This at a time when the UK and most of the rest of the world has struggled through the recession and when the UK economy is still somewhat reluctant to show any real appetite for growth.

What’s more, ASOS’s success comes at a time when many of its competitors including household brands such as Next, French Connection and M&S are still facing difficult trading conditions.

So what’s the secret of success for ASOS?

Well, it has a great product offering at exceptional prices. Critically, it has a ‘store on every town / city’. That is to say, it is a pure online retailer with a global presence. In fact, ASOS has achieved a market cap of over £450m since its launch in 2000.

A lot of this success has been apportioned to the company’s pure online status. As well as a lower barrier to entry, the internet allows companies to be a lot cleverer and effective with their marketing.

Selling online

Now, while we don’t suggest that getting your business online will turn you into an instant multi-million pound business, what we are saying is that achieving online success is not the preserve of corporates with large budgets.

In fact, with easy access to web hosting services in the UK, selling your products / services online is far easier and quicker than you might think.

Keep it simple – use ecommerce templates

Rather than investing significant amounts in bespoke web development, you can start selling online using a simple ecommerce template costing around £100 per year, available from most UK web hosting companies. What’s more, most web hosts will throw in a free domain name too.

Most ecommerce templates also come with free web hosting – at least that’s the case with most UK web hosting companies. Importantly, as the name suggests, ecommerce templates are designed for people with little or no knowledge of actually building websites allowing you to start selling online while keeping costs of creating an ecommerce website to a minimum.

So start selling online the easy way with ecommerce templates. And remember to ask your web host for free web hosting and free domain name. Good luck!

Domain · domain name · Ecommerce · Hosting · UK web hosting · website template

In our previous blog, we looked at some of the key points to keep in mind when choosing a domain name and considered pros and cons of opting for generic or abstract domain name.

However, whether you opt for the former or latter type of domain name, the challenge remains the same – to cut through the clutter of thousands of marketing messages all of us simply ignore every day and etch your domain name on your customers’ minds.

So, here’s our quick and simple guide to choosing the best domain name for your business:

1. Make it memorable

We don’t all have memory of an elephant! Make it memorable and you may just get your potential customers to find you rather than your competitors.

2. Make it short

In fact, the shorter, the better. Partly it helps with memorising and party it reduces the chances of misspelling or mistyping.

3. Make it simple

Try not to mix letters and numbers and the tired 2 (for ‘to’) and 4 (for ‘for’).

4. Make it suggestive

Without becoming part of the clutter (see previous blog), try a name that suggests the nature of your business.

5. Make it hard to misspell

Let’s face it, ever since Mr. Gates gave us the spellchecker at a click, the nation’s spelling ability hasn’t quite improved with our knowledge of all things Internet!

Finally, remember, most of the good names are already taken. So, don’t worry if your chosen name is already gone. Stick at it. Remember, how long it took to perfect your 30-seconds lift proposition for your business? A good domain name is your 1-second proposition. It may take more than a few seconds to get it right! Good luck!

Domain · domain name · url · web address · web site address · web site name

Not only does a domain name help your potential customers find your business on the Internet, it could also define your business in a word or two. In fact, a good domain could well be your best asset. And in some cases, it could be the difference between success and failure.

So what is so special about a domain name?

Imagine walking down your local high street. Simply by looking at the shop signage and the window displays, you can tell a bank from a bar, a fashion store from a phone shop, a green grocer from a golf shop.

But on the Internet it’s an altogether different story. There are no visual signs or smells and sounds. There is no chap with the ‘golf sale’ pointing you to a new set of golf clubs!

On the Internet, your potential customers have no way of knowing what you have to offer until they get there. But getting there may not be that easy. I mean, when they started out, would you have known Dell.com sells computers or Amazon.com is not a tourist guide to an increasingly less lush region in South America?

Unless you have backers with deep pockets and the marketing budget of a blue chip company, you might want a domain name that’s both memorable and suggests what your business is about. In an instant.

What’s the best route to a successful domain name?

Broadly speaking, you have two choices – generic or abstract/real names.

Generic names provide instant clues to your business. For example, you could guess AskJeeves.com is a search engine, smallbusiness.co.uk is all about small businesses and startups.co.uk might be useful if you were setting up a new business.

In fact, some generic names have attracted premium prices at the height of the dot com bubble. Business.com was bought by a Californian-based company for $8m, Compaq paid over $3m for AltaVista and Sex.com still remains the most expensive name having exchanged hands for a staggering $12m.

Clearly, a good name commands attention in more than one way.

But there is a problem with generic names. While they may imply the nature of your business to your potential customers, there is a danger of getting lost in the clutter too. For example, try typing ‘small business’ into a search engine and here’s a sample of just some of the websites you are presented with:

www.SmallBusinessEssentials.co.uk

www.smallbusinessadvice.org.uk

www.businesslink.gov.uk

www.clearlybusiness.com

www.smallbizpod.co.uk

www.smallbusiness.co.uk

www.mybusiness.co.uk

How do you stand out in this crowd?

Well, you may want to look at more abstract or real names. Yahoo, Amazon, tesco.com, waterstones.com are some great examples. Of course, these companies have spent a penny or two on their branding for the last year or two, or decades!

And that could be the disadvantage with abstract or real names if you are a new company – the cost of building the brand name. A clever name by itself may not be sufficient. It requires considerable marketing resource to make it stand out and to make the name synonymous with the nature of your business. A little bit of clever marketing, however, may compensate for a lack of a marketing budget.

In our next blog, we look at 5 key points to consider when choosing your domain name.

Domain · domain name · url · web address · web site address · web site name