My business’ online identity

You’ve thought long and hard to create the name for your business enterprise. The name itself may relate to your organisation’s culture; its personality; the products or services you provide, or perhaps it comes from your intended positioning in the marketplace. Whatever the case may be, your name along with your brand becomes your identity, your handle to consumers in the real world.

So what happens to your identity when you take it beyond the physical; what happens to your identity when you go online? Having an online presence is fast becoming the norm in today’s tech savvy, plugged-in culture. Along with the many great opportunities that exist online, going ‘live’ also presents us with a mixed bag of challenges. The latest data from the Internet World Stats (Statistics) suggests that Internet penetration is currently 17.8% of the world’s population, that’s a potential audience of 1,173,109,925 (people), who will see your name and brand. The figures are stated to impress upon you how expansive the Internet really is.

There are literally millions of businesses whose main interest, like yours, is to capture a segment of this huge market. It is easy to imagine yourself getting lost in amongst the crowd, that is, unless your intended target market knows your name.

Naming your domain after the business would seem like an obvious choice for one simple reason, when people think of your website, they will most obviously think of your name. For example, if you were to think about ‘Sony’, most people would automatically go to www.sony.com, but this may not be an option.

With the explosion of the Internet, the availability of ‘vacant’ .com names are fast becoming scarce and you may have to resign yourself to the fact that your ‘unique’ name is being shared with other businesses either locally or globally. Take our name ” Jack in the box” for example, the name is pretty “out there” for a marketing/advertising agency, but ” Jack in the box” is a burger franchise in the US; a novelty toy store here in Australia; an Italian rock band; an I.T. consultancy service in the UK; and the list goes on.

The problem here is that if your name is ” CompanyA“, but your website is ” CompanyB.com“, people looking for you might type in ” CompanyA.com” which belongs to your competitor. So that’s one lost sale for you, and at your expense. In our case, jackinthebox.com was already taken but the opportunity to grab http://theboxprod.wpengine.com was there and because none of the other Jack in the box’s are industry competitors, we didn’t have the same problem as ” CompanyA“.

There are so many things to consider when choosing a domain name for your company or business, some obvious, some hidden. At Jack in the box, we offer the full range of online marketing services, including website design and development, and complete e-commerce solutions. Click here to see more. If you’re looking to launch your business online, it pays to get professional help in getting the name right the first time around, to maximise your potential on the Internet, and if nothing else, help you avoid batting for the other team.