At first, it may seem innocuous. It’s just a domain name, a sequence of letters that people use to visit your website. Surely it makes absolutely no difference how well it is presented, right? Absolutely wrong. In fact, your web address plays an essential role in your marketing strategy.
It’s often the first impression customers have with your brand. Therefore, you want to ensure that it’s easily-typeable and incredibly-memorable. You don’t want one single prospect to hear your web address and forget it once they go to type it into Google – this could be a lost sale!
As such, here is why you must optimise your web address and ensure it is one that the customers will have little trouble searching online:
1. It can be a customer’s first impression
When it comes to business domain names, you want them to have a positive effect on your customer’s psyche. After all, it can easily be a customer’s first impression of your brand, and so the last thing you want is for it to be incredibly difficult to remember or full random spelling that it makes it hard to type.
Say you run a furniture store called “Furniture for You”. You may have been in the game for many years but it’s time to make a new website and attract more customers. The last thing you want is to complicate your web address through actions like changing the “for” to the letter “4” and “you” to “u” i.e. “www.furniture4u.com.au”.
But why? Isn’t that just a sleek and sharp way to search it in Google? It can be, but not when your actual business name is written with the words “for” and “you”. Your customers – new and existing – will have likely read your business name as “Furniture for You” and will be expecting to type that into the search bar i.e. “www.furnitureforyou.com.au” and not any random spellings that could confuse and ultimately deter them from visiting your site!
2. It shows you care about your brand
A shabby web address carries a strange vibe for customers. It says something along the lines of, “oh, I don’t really care what the web address is, the customers will figure it out anyway”. Every part of your website is an opportunity to show that you’re serious about your business and want it to look professional at every click.
Let’s take our furniture brand for example: would your customers be happier seeing the web address “www.furnitureforyou.com.au” or prefer to come across a web address that reads something like “www.furnitureforyou4h9d”? We all know the answer to this one, it’s a no-brainer, make it easy for your customer and show that you care about your company success through having a sleek, sharp and succinct web address!
3. It makes it easy to type
Let’s say that one of your existing customers tells their mate about your brand. They give them your company name and the friend is sure to look it up once they get home. They forget to search it on their smartphone just before they start the car but remember once they’re home and get to search your awesome brand and the fantastic product offering you have.
Only problem is they can’t figure out your web address’s random spelling! Sure, they can message their mate saying, “hey, can you link me that website you told me about today? I can’t seem to get the address spelling right…” but it’s more than likely they will just move onto your competitor without bothering to wait for their mate to reply.
Therefore, you must make every letter count to ensure that your customer has no trouble finding your website!
