#telnames

In case you missed it, we're delighted to be able to announce that we've now integrated PayPal into the Telnames service, so you can set up a shop, take payments for services or donations for clubs or charities.

If you've got your voucher set up, it's pretty much as simple a process as that, with the only difference being that you need to associate your PayPal account (by typing in your email address) and choosing a payment currency. We don't take any commission or charge anything additionally for integrating PayPal into your Telname, so why not give it a go?

...to make it even simpler to edit your Telname.

For the past couple of weeks, we’ve been talking about how important it is to make the whole process of buying domain names and getting your own online presence sorted out quickly and cheaply and how we’re doing this at Telnames. 

We’ve referenced several times that it’s really important to own your own domain name, especially if you’re a small business or professional, but why? What’s wrong with using free services, free hosting, free listings or sub-domains? Here are seven solid reasons:

1.  Control. The number one reason to register your domain name is so you have control over it. This is closely tied with all of the points below in terms of the benefits that come from this. If you don’t control the space you use to present yourself to others online, you can’t truly trust it to represent your business the way you want it to.

2.  Identity. Because a domain name has financial worth and a traceable transaction associated to it, a domain name can be a verifiable online identity. Thus, as we’ll see later on, this is seen to be useful when it comes to search engines indexing and presenting information back to people.

3.  Branding. Inevitably, people will search for your name and/or your company name in search engines. You may be listed in third party directories, using free sub-domains for blogging and participate in social networks, but if you haven’t registered your name or company as a domain name, then you won’t be sure as to what people might find. Google+ Places are fine if people are searching through Google for you, but Facebook has an agreement with Bing, so what will Facebook users find out about you?  If you have a common business or personal name, it’s imperative that you register it as a domain and begin using it to first defend and then build your brand.

 4.  Ownership. A domain name is a piece of property. Whoever registers it owns it. If you read Blogger’s terms of service for example, you’ll discover that you don’t really own your blog; nor your Twitter handle, social media page on Facebook or listing in services like Yelp.  These can be taken away from you at any time.  A domain name gives you uniqueness and ownership and belongs to you for as long as you want. Owning your own domain name is like living in your own apartment and not in a rented one where your landlord sets the rules about what you can do. You address is your own and not a shared one.  This is crucially important when it comes to the next point.

5.  Authority.  Getting found in search engines is crucial in today’s internet-based economy, as for the majority of people it’s their entry point to the web when it comes to purchasing decisions (rather than chit-chatting on social networks).  Getting found in search engines relies on that search engine giving authority to the place where you want to be found. 

Search engines give importance to second-level (i.e. the 'yourdomain' bit in 'yourdomain.tel') domain names over 99% of other services (possibly apart from the popular social network at that time) because of all of the above points, but also because the expectation that people have when searching is to see the website of the company they are looking for first.

Search engines recognize the importance of a domain name because the person or company has invested money in the ownership of that rather than sub-domains (yourblog.blogspot.com for example) or a part of another domain name (facebook.com/yourbusiness or yell.com/yourlisting) belonging to other people. With a free webhost the home page of that website gets the limelight whereas your page can get found for only the content of your page. You own home page with a free domain website is in fact the home page of a sub domain whereas your webhost’s home page is the actual homepage for that domain name. Your own domain name thus helps you to get that free search engine traffic that is vital for your internet success.

6.  Portability. A domain name allows you to cross the internet with ease, not being tied to any third party service provider. What does that mean?  No matter what social network is popular today or which failed in the past, you won’t be damaged in terms of your relationship with your customers or wasted marketing effort if you provide people with your own domain name so they know where they can find you in future.  Equally, domain names are indexed as we said by most search engines and can be typed as direct addresses in all browser address bars.  Try finding a Google+ Local page in Bing, Yahoo! or DuckDuckGo and you’ll see.

7.  Flexibility.  Is your blog mobile-ready? Can people on smart phones find your social profile easily when they’re on the move? How heavy is your online presence when it comes to people finding you on post-paid or pay as you go mobile contracts? Again, if you’re not in control or don’t own your own domain, you won’t be able to help them.  With your own domain, you can help people get the information they need in a format that’s right for them.

So there you have it.  None of the above is difficult to achieve, expensive to implement or requiring a doctorate in advanced computing to set up with our Telnames service. 

“Out of clutter find simplicity; From discord find harmony; In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.”

Albert Einstein’s three rules of work

At Telnames, we see a huge gap in the market still needing to be addressed when it comes to small businesses marketing themselves online.  This is borne out by the fact that there are still so many small businesses (both here in the UK and around the world) without their own online presence. Add to that, brands of all shapes and sizes are without mobile-ready sites. All these are missing out on tapping into a vast potential audience waiting for simple content in a mobile-ready format. 

In our view, the mismatch is generated by a gap in the products and services on offer in our industry and the real requirements of small businesses. In most cases, they’re either paying for technology they don’t need as they don’t use 95% of the functionality or they’re simply not using those products and services at all, missing out completely.  Effectively, the choice today is either to pay for services padded with functionality they won’t use, or spend time and effort on third party sites which are free but which can then change direction at the drop of a hat (think Facebook Timeline), causing huge headaches.

We’re following Einstein’s three principles of work to try to achieve the goal of helping anyone get benefit out of owning and using a domain name; taking the rocket science out of the process and putting the rocket fuel back into marketing your business.

Firstly, we’ve simplified the product and the distribution in order to help our small business and professional customers really get what they need out of the internet.  They simply need to be found by searchers, need to display the essential content and connect with potential customers in whichever way is convenient (such as a phone call, email or through social media).   They also need to own their own presence in order to be in control of their brand, reputation and connection with their customers. 

Secondly, recognizing that the world has moved on from 1990’s-style Flash-based websites that no longer work on many mobile devices, we’ve slimmed the content down dramatically. Busy sites do not engage, people have a low attention span and threshold for marketing speak. Simple tools such as use of video are much more engaging and template-based interaction (think Facebook or LinkedIn pages, Pinterest or Tumblr) are based around engaging content, not push marketing any more. Many small businesses are learning how to use Twitter to tweet events and offers. Twitter users like the convenience and brevity of the 140 character message limit. The last thing they want to link to is a heavy multi-page web site with tricky navigation especially from mobile phones. A link to a single page that displays all the essential stuff on first view is much more appealing.

So we’ve focused our customers on what they need to show and on what works, both for customers and search engines.  It’s no longer the case that a small business needs to ‘look’ like a big business online; instead, authenticity and engagement sells.  If customers like you and what you do, they’ll buy.

Thirdly, the other issue is that a busy and big site just won’t work in a mobile scenario.  Your customer is now more likely than ever to be reaching out to you from a smart phone and there’s a 50/50 chance they’re on a budget when doing so.  All they want to do is contact you, in a simple, low cost and quick way.  An excellent user experience for both customers and end users on the move is essential in this increasingly time-poor environment.

If you’re reading this and are like 99.9% of us with a basic level of skills, the products that address these requirements are either not affordable or are not simple.  That’s not surprising, as the domain name industry was set up by, and is really designed to serve, those people with technical aptitude and money. 

That’s the gap that we’re intending to address, providing the opportunity for small businesses to invest wisely, at a sustainable level, in a simple self-service online solution that positions them clearly and professionally to their potential customer.  It’s easy, quick and cheap, but also lightweight and agile, delivering an excellent user experience. We think this is a huge barrier to revenue generation and social mobility, so we’re aiming to fix that at Telnames. 

We had a great time recently meeting customers at The Business Show in London at the end of May.  The show was incredibly well attended by people considering starting up a business or who had been in business for a couple of years.

What was really interesting was that around 95% of people we spoke to, when asked if they had a website, after thinking about it, didn't!

What does that mean?  Well, they may well have registered a domain name and got that far.  They may well have asked someone they knew to build something for them, which was either still in development hell or which they weren't quite happy with and thus were not promoting.  Or they had had something built a good while ago and it had not been updated for a long time. 

Added to that, very few of them had begun to think about a mobile-ready version that enabled customers to get in touch with them from even the most basic phones right through to the latest smart phones.

That's where they were delighted to see our service, which enabled them to fix all of those problems, on our stand, in around 15 minutes and for just £14.95 a year.