3 Steps to Distinguish Your Company Online

With more than 126 million Web sites on the Internet, making your online presence stand out from thousands of nearly identical businesses is not an easy task. To help you along, here are three tips to help surfers find your Web site in the virtual haystack.

illustration: istock

1 Get the name right
Your domain name is your identity. For the most part, owning an unclaimed domain name doesn’t cost more than $10 a year, but it can make or break your online presence.

The How:
• Choose a name that is short and obvious; Starbucks Coffee Co. simply uses starbucks.com, while Texas fruitcake specialist Collin Street Bakery owns fruitcake.com. Consider alternate domain suffixes, such as .biz, .net and .store. With a strong domain name, you may even consider renaming your business.
• Buy other domains that users may instinctively type in while searching for your company. Searching for asbhawaii.com, americansavings.com or americansavingsbank.com will all lead you to the Web site of American Savings Bank.

The Pitfall:
• Cybersquatters snatch up domain names similar or identical to names of existing companies and sell the names for lofty prices. While the practice is illegal for the most part, legal price tags for more attractive generic names may be out of reach for most businesses. For example, Business.com, which was purchased for $7.4 million in 1999, was acquired by business directory company R.H. Donnely for a whopping $345 million in July 2007.

2 Develop an e-Word of Mouth
A product or service is only successful if other people acknowledge its success. “Before you buy electronics, you go to cnet.com for reviews. If you want to buy a car, you look at the Kelly Blue Book,” says Tung Bui, Matson Distinguished Professor of Global Business at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. He adds that people are reluctant to buy things without a recommendation.

The How:
• Encourage customer interactivity. Allowing site visitors to comment on and rate your products and services not only helps your demographic research but also gives potential customers a sense of professional validity.
• Get other sites to link to your page. Send press releases to online media and popular blogs. Create alternative portals, such as MySpace accounts and directory listings. Google will use the number of reputable sites referring to your site to determine your priority level in a Google search.

The Pitfall:
• While it may be tempting to eliminate negative reviews within your site, try a hands-off approach. An overwhelming number of perfect reviews will have some site users questioning your integrity. Instead, only take down obscene comments. Use the feedback to improve your product or service, and make those improvements known.

3 Use the Push/Pull Effect
According to Bui, every good business Web site should tactfully push its services to consumers and keep pulling them back with a personalized, dynamic interface.

The How:
• E-mail blasts – sending graphic e-mails to a large number of subscribed individuals – are OK, as long as they’re done right. Include value in your e-mails, such as “how-to” articles and e-coupons. Only send e-mails to users who have agreed to receive them, and always include a way to opt out.
• Create a sense of belonging and customization. Amazon.com automatically recommends new items to users based on their previous purchases and expressed interests. Include a log-in feature. If your site includes electronic buying and selling, constantly remind users of your site’s security features, and be sure to support those claims.

The Pitfall:
• Send too many e-mails and you’ll quickly get marked as spam and ignored. Throw too many pop-ups on your Web site, and the viewer will feel bombarded and threatened. Give users what they want.

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