Starting a New Business Checklist: Build Up Your Online Assets First

Congratulation for Starting a New Business! 

You must be both excited and anxious to start your new business as soon as possible. However, before you get too excited of finding a nice logo right away, you should actually build up your online asset first. The reason is to secure your digital identitiy before your competitors do so as to stand out in today’s competitive digital marketplace.

Below is a list of online assets you should secure and build before moving on to your other priorities:

Domain Name Registration

Just like your new office have a physical address, your website must have a domain name so it can be found easily online. In fact, the very first thing you must do before starting a new business is to register and secure a domain name for your website otherwise your customers will not find you or go to the wrong domain.

According to Websitehostingrating.com, there are about 342 million domain name registered across all top-level domains (TLDs). In other words, it is not easy to get your desired domain name nowadays. Ideally, your domain name must match your company name to avoid any confusion. However, in the event that your desired domain name is not available, you must either think of changing your company name (if you have not registered) or do the following to the domain name so you can still get a domain name close to what you want. 

If the extension .com is not available, try to add country extension such as .com.sg or .sg to your domain name.

• Abbreviate Your Company Name

Use abbreviation if you have a long company name such as the following companies:

• Use Verb, Noun or Adjective to Your Domain Name

If abbreviation is not possible then try a longer domain name by adding verb, noun or adjective to it. For example, adding a prefix using the word “the” – theasiacollective.com or adding country name as a suffix such as harleysingapore.com

There is pro and con as long domain name allows you to tell your customers more details about your business but it is also prone to spelling or typo error. In addition, your graphic designer will not happy with super long domain name as it will destroy the layout of your supposed beautifully name card.

Domain name must be easy to remember, pronounce and spell especially if you have overseas customers who need to speak to you over the phone. Try to avoid any hyphen or numeric number in your domain as it is not easy to convey on the phone. In addition, try not to choose a domain name too close as your competitors as it might confuse your customers and run into copyright issues.

Website

Many new businesses postpone website design until their businesses are in operation. It may be too late as either your competitors might take away your domain or have their websites planted with your company product or service keywords. Once their websites are established and ranked well online by search engines, it will difficult to out beat them in future. Hence, it is recommended when you register for your domain name, you can also start registering for a web hosting plan to set up your company website. A new website will normally take some time to rank in search engine so start early to gain competitive advantage.

Today, the web hosting services are not expensive, you can start on a basic web hosting plan for less than $10 per month. You can check out the web hosting detail here.

Emails

Once you have signed up for a web hosting plan, you can start creating email with your domain name. This will make you look professional and trustworthy than using Gmail or any other private email. Not every customers will be comfortable doing business with a company who just use Gmail especially when online scam is so common nowadays. Customers want to deal with genuine and legal business so getting your own company email is the first step to trust.

Social Media

Like the domain name, you may want to set up your social media account early and get the desired URL for your Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn business page. The consistent URL for all your online assets will create consistency in your branding which help to develop trust and identity from your customers.

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Once you have secured and set up the above, you have achieved a major milestones in your business. However, running a business is not a smooth sailing process so if you encounter problem and need help of setting any of the above, feel free to contact us. We are happy to help.