digital marketing
By Carrie-ann | Jan 01, 2017 | Building a Website

How to protect your domain name & select the right web hosting for your business.

Creating a beautiful website is just one step on the road to gaining an online presence. You need a domain name, and you need to ensure that it is protected. You also need to arrange hosting if you want visitors to be able to find your business online.

Registering your domain
Your domain is the name of your site – it begins with ‘www.’ and is the name you type into the address bar of your browser to load it onto your computer screen. It is very important that you keep control of your domain name, so bear in mind that paying for it does not automatically grant you ownership. You need to ensure that you are listed as the registered owner if you want to maintain legal rights of ownership of the domain.

Domain monitoring and locking
Make sure that you log in to your account on a regular basis to ensure that your email contact address remains current. It is possible to buy domain monitoring, which sends an email alert if someone tries to change your domain name settings.
It is possible to go into your account and lock your domain name to prevent anyone gaining access and transferring it elsewhere. You can buy protected registration, which is a worthwhile investment as it gives you an additional layer of security to prevent fraudulent activity on your account.

Web hosting
For people to be able to view your website, you need to purchase web hosting. This buys you space on the server that stores your website, displaying it on demand to your users’ devices. There are plenty of choices when it comes to web hosting, along with a wide variety of prices. Do not be tempted to go with the cheapest, as more expensive hosting services usually offer enhanced security measures. There are thousands of fraudsters looking for loopholes to exploit and it makes good business sense to choose a web hosting package that has strong security measures in place.

Scalability
When your website first goes live, it is unlikely that you will attract huge visitor numbers straight away. Most business models allow for growth and expansion; over time, it is to be hoped that your website will see increasing amounts of traffic. You need to ensure that your web hosting company can keep pace with demand – bear in mind that we are becoming increasingly impatient with delays and that most visitors will click or swipe their way to a competitor’s site if your website takes more than three seconds to load onto their devices. Make sure that your web hosting company has less than one per cent downtime per month and that it can keep pace with extra demand to ensure that your site keeps working for you.