Lesson 9: Ecommerce Training – Domain and emails – pricing, choosing
In the previous section (i.e., eCommerce Training – Domain) we had evaluated how domain name works. Here we discuss how domain names are priced and how to choose a good domain name.
How are they priced?
The prices of the domains depends on the number of features being offered by the domain providers and can vary from 99 to 1,50,000 per domain name, per year. Some of these features can include Website Building, Multiple Email Accounts, Domain Theft Protection, Mail Forwarding, Domain Forwarding, etc. You can choose the one that suits your needs. You can also subscribe for a longer duration for additional discounts. Now, for an ecommerce store supported by a platform such as Shopnix, a basic plan should suffice. So you need not spend much on the domain name. Some of the basic features that should however be present include Multiple Email Accounts, Domain Theft Protection, and Mail Forwarding.
Multiple email accounts are useful when you want to set up separate email accounts for different departments of your store (such as customer support, product support, CEO, etc). Domain theft protection is essential security feature for preventing the misuse of your domain name. Mail forwarding, as the name suggests helps in auto-forwarding mails sent to the common ids of the store to another mail provider.
How to choose a domain and support email id?
Choosing a domain name can be tricky as well as challenging. While it is simple if you already have a registered business name, it can be challenging to choose a trendy domain name if you are establishing a business. Additionally, you may also want to have a trendier name for your webstore rather than having the traditional name (eg. Sri Laxmi Venkateshwara Cloth Merchants).
Simply put, the domain name should be easy to remember, simple to type, trendy and as short as possible. The domain name need not always reflect your business. Additionally, think of the products that you may want to list in future. For eg., if you had chosen ‘xyzclothing’ as your domain name as you were dealing with only clothing initially, but then decide to include footwear also on your online store, the domain name ‘xyzclothing’ would not hold good. In such instances having a general name such as ‘xyzstyles’ would be more appropriate.
Another aspect to be kept in mind while choosing a domain name is abbreviating long names. If your business name is “Unicorn Software Consulting” and you choose a domain name “unisofcnsltng.com”, so that it covers your complete business name, your customers would have a hard time remembering how you abbreviated it. In such cases it is preferable to have a domain name “unicornconsulting” or “unicornsoftware” which is easier to remember.
The domain extensions such as .com, .in, .net can be chosen based on your business or organisation type and the availability. The .com extensions are easier to remember and denote a commercial website. Other trendier extensions such as .club, .guru, or even .rocks can also be chosen.
Having a support email id linked to your domain name in order to direct all customer queries to one mail id is beneficial. It is often easier to name it as support@abc.com or contact@abc.com. You may want to have different mail ids if you want to segregate it further. For eg., sales queries can be directed to sales@abc.com, return queries to returns@abc.com and feedback to feedback@abc.com.
The author, Dr. Lirish Chinnappa, is the founder of CoorgShoppe.com, an online store that sells cool stuff from Coorg. He also moonlights as a dentist and writes for various technical papers around the world.
