There are a lot of moving parts when it comes to your digital presence, and we want to help you understand what they all mean. The first step of course is to have a website – sounds easy, right? Well, there are a lot of things that go on “behind the scenes” that your audience doesn’t see. These steps help make it possible for your audience to find your website, find answers to their questions, and view you as a reliable resource in their buying process. Let’s talk about some of these different aspects and how they impact your overall brand identity and digital presence.
Domain Registration
One of the first steps when you are creating a website and establishing your brand is to register a domain for your website, email, or other web services. The domain name is the address of your website that a person types in the browser URL bar to visit your website. For example, Shout It Out Design’s domain is shoutitoutdesign.com. Essentially, this is how your website and web services are found and recognized. It should be noted that the exact domain name that you want for your brand may not be available, and you will have to find a variation that isn’t already being used.
Your domain name is something you have to register, as it needs to remain unique to your brand. You must register your domain name for a period of time, and the domain will remain yours as long as you continue to renew the registration. The registration period is a minimum of one year, but you can generally register for 10 years at one time. This will need to be renewed annually, and if you fail to renew the registration, another entity is able to register the domain name and take ownership of it. Shout It Out Design will help secure and renew our clients’ domains to ensure there are no interruptions in your digital presence.
Your domain helps with your digital identity and personality. It will help users recognize your brand and easily find your website and other web resources. This however is a small piece of the puzzle when establishing your digital presence.
Website Hosting
Your website not only needs a domain, it also needs web hosting. Think of it this way, if the domain is the address of your website, then the website hosting is the home where your website lives. All of the information and pages on your website live within this home.
A web host, or web hosting service, provides space on a web server for your website to store all of its files and information. This space is where users are directed when they type in your address, or domain. Since this is where all of your information will live, reliable hosting is essential for the success of your online presence. There are many different hosting options and companies that will host your website, but all come with different capabilities. Choosing the right one for your brand will ensure your website functions the way you need it to for your audience. For example, if you are a company doing business primarily online, it is vital that your website loads quickly and completely so your customers don’t bounce off of your website out of frustration. Your website hosting capabilities will play a big role in this.
Website Maintenance
Every website requires some level of maintenance. Website maintenance ensures that your website is healthy, relevant, and performing to the best of its ability to keep your audience happy. Just as your car requires regular check ups and maintenance, so does your website!
Regular website maintenance consists of keeping up with security updates, adding fresh content to your website, ensuring quick load times, and doing all you can to keep Google and other search engines happy. Performing this maintenance improves your search engine optimization (SEO), making it easier for your website to be found. It will also ensure your audience has a positive experience on your site, keeping them coming back to you as a trusted resource.
Here are a few tasks that should be performed regularly (whether that be weekly, monthly, quarterly, or annually) to keep your website in good working order:
- Update plugins and website software
- Add new content to your website through your blog
- Check for broken links or 404 errors
- Analyze website statistics
- Analyze security scans and resolve any issues
- Test website load speed
- Update existing website content including graphics and images
- Update meta descriptions and meta titles
- Renew domain name
- Ensure all content on your website is accurate and up to date
A website is not something that you can manage with a “set it and forget it” mentality. It requires ongoing attention to keep the information accurate and relevant to your audience, and keep the website functioning properly. When your brand is new or smaller, your website may not require quite as much attention, but as your brand grows, so will the level of required maintenance. We strongly recommend that your website provider be able to register your domain, host your site, and maintain your site to ensure a streamlined customer experience. Of course, Shout It Out Design is able to help our clients with all of that!
Email Hosting
Wait, didn’t we already talk about hosting? Email hosting is similar to web hosting in that it is space on a server that stores online information. This time, we’re talking about your business’ emails. This server will hold onto all of the emails being sent within your domain so you can access them at any time.
So when is email hosting necessary? Of course you have access to set up free email accounts through platforms like Yahoo and Gmail, but do you really want to be sending business emails through your personal email account? And what happens when you start to hire employees if you haven’t already? This is when email hosting comes into play.
Email hosting will allow you to have your own email domain, similar to your website domain. It is an easily recognizable address to a server that mail will be sent. For example, our email domain matches our website domain, shoutitoutdesign.com. Therefore, our email addresses read example@shoutitoutdesign.com. Please note that your email domain doesn’t necessarily have to match your website domain, but it does make it easier for brand recognition.
One main benefit of having your own email domain that we have already mentioned is that all of your business’ emails that share this domain will be stored in one location and will be easily accessible at any time. So, if there is staff turnover, or you have a breakdown in communication, you can always go back and look through all of the emails that have been sent and received. Another major benefit is that your brand will be easily recognized through your staff’s email addresses, and it will help your business seem more credible and professional. As your business grows, you might even set up shared email accounts that multiple users have access to. This will be helpful if you have different departments such as accounting, human resources, sales, etc., and ensures customers always know who to contact. Shout It Out Design follows this process through the use of our support email. Our goal is to provide our clients with a streamlined and efficient experience, so when they email the address specifically set up for support, it will send to multiple individuals on our team. This ensures that our clients don’t experience any delays on their request due to staff being out of office, in another meeting, etc.
Ready to Get Started?
Weighing the many options that are laid out above can be overwhelming, and we think it’s worth having a discussion with someone to ensure you’re making the right decisions for your business. Good news…we can help! Shout It Out Design has the capability to keep up with your growing business, and provide the support you need to continue moving forward. If you have questions, or would like to know more about how we can help you, give us a shout!