Website Design Solutions

“The First Steps”

Whether you are creating your own website, or you hire a website designer, there are a few very important things that you should know before you begin.

What is your website about?

Get an Idea! The first thing you need to do is decide on what you want your website to be about. You need to ask yourself:

What is my "niche" or main topic?
What will be the purpose of my website?
What do I want my website to accomplish?

Who is your “Target Audience”?

Picture of an empty audience to depict targeting your audience. Your Target Audience is the group of people who are expected to visit your website— the market being targeted. These people will be viewing your website for a specific reason and it is important to know exactly what they are looking for when they visit your website. A clearly defined purpose or goal as well as an understanding of what visitors want to do or feel when they come to your site will help to identify the target audience.

Choosing a Domain Name

Your domain name is very important because it should represent your website and provide an idea of what your website is about.

Here are some tips on choosing a domain name:

Keep it short and easy-to-remember.
Choose a .com suffix, since most people associate .com with a business.
If you have an organization or club, you can choose a .org suffix.
The right domain name will attract buyers, increase visibility and inspire trust.
Choose key words closely related to your subject matter.
A good key word domain name will certainly add to your visibility within the major search engines.
Using your company name could also be a good way for people to remember it.

Picture of the internet on a monitor finding a domain name. There are many places to purchase your Domain Name. The two places I recommend are GoDaddy and DomainsNext. When you purchase your domain name, it is also a good idea to purchase it for five to ten years.

Why?

When someone looks up your domain name in WhoIs, they will see not only who the owner is, but the terms of the registration. Someone serious about their business will register their domain name(s) for at least five years.

Need Help?

There is a free program available for finding the best domain name. It's called Domain Name Analyzer. Feel free to download this program and use it to perform your searches. It won't have any ads. You won't need to register for anything, and best of all, it won't cost you anything.

Okay, now that you've chosen the perfect domain name, now what?

You have two choices; you can make the purchase yourself and leave your domain 'parked' at the registrar until you need it, and you or your website designer can make the DNS transfer to your new website location (the hosting company), or, Distinct Website Designs can make the DNS transfer to your hosting account once we complete your website design. The choice is yours.

What Is DNS?

In a nutshell, DNS means domain name system and it stores and associates information with domain names, but essentially, it translates domain names (computer hostnames) to IP addresses.

You can read more in–depth information about the Domain Name System at Wikipedia.

Let's continue now to Finding Your Niche which will help you determine what your website should be about and perhaps make some money.

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