Running small businesses can be extremely difficult. While it is rewarding, bosses need to worry about their finances and finding the right staff that will be able to advance the company. But in 2008, as the world becomes increasingly web-savvy, having a successful website which can draw in customers or be used for advertising and sponsorship is a fundamental part of running a small company.



A leading business website has advised managers to make sure that, when creating a website, they choose a domain name that is not too complicated and easy to remember. The easier the website address is to remember, the more likely it is that customers will visit it.

A spokesman for smallbusiness.co.uk said that small firms can also try to be a little bit clever when they pick their website domain name, ensuring that the site includes keywords and content in order to push up the firm's search engine rankings.

Domain names are becoming an increasingly lucrative business, with some 128 million domain name registrations having been registered worldwide in the first three months of 2007. Digital infrastructure company VeriSign's Domain Name Industry Brief revealed this represented a 31 per cent rise in the number of registrations over the same period in 2006 and six per cent over the previous three months.

Similarly, new domain name registrations topped 10.7 million in the first quarter of last year, proving that the domain name industry is still going strong. Figures show that this was on the back of particularly high new registration rates between October and December 2006. However, the year-on-year increase still stood at 25 per cent, representing a significant rise.

The smallbusiness.co.uk spokesman said that in a lot of industries, the bigger businesses snap up most of the obvious domain names, but with a bit of savvy clients can increase their chances of being found on a website in order to boost their profile and profits.

He added that having a good domain name is one of the weapons that small business owners can have in their arsenal, but it is just one of the things. The spokesman stressed that a particularly long-winded and obscure domain name will not do the business any favours. He urged small business managers to keep it simple and straightforward in terms of the business that is being run. For example, his own website smallbusiness.co.uk does exactly what it says on the tin.

Disclaimer:

This article has been written for information and interest purposes only. The information contained within this article is the opinion of the author only, and should not be construed as advice or used to make financial decisions. Expert financial advice should always be sought and any links contained within this article are included for information purposes only.