Q. I’ve been informed that my DOMAIN is up for renewal. What exactly is a domain and why do I need to renew it?
A. Your domain name (many of our clients use multiple domain names), basically represents an address where your website can be located online. It is what your customers will think of when they try to locate you and how you will express your business to customers, clients, donors or readers. A domain name serves as an Internet Protocol (IP) resource, but that sounds kinda “techie”. So, in other words a domain name is an easy way to remember something that is more complex. Most people refer to domain names as their “web address” or “website”.
Securing a web address is vital to your business, and care needs to be asserted to be sure that your domains do not expire. They are purchased and renewed on an annual basis, but you can also secure them for multiple years. You can think of your purchase of a domain name as a sort of “lease”. As long as you pay to renew, it’s yours to use. If you decide not to renew it, someone else has the option to buy it. A domain name can also be used to personalize your email address presenting a more professional image to your clients, tying your domain name to your email addresses.
Often businesses will register additional domains to keep others from registering them, which could otherwise cause confusion to their customers and clients. Registering additional domain names can prevent loss of business from potential customers being misdirected to another site. Other reasons to purchase additional domains may be to keep competitors from purchasing them, to promote a campaign, or to redirect to a page on their website. Additional domains can redirect to your primary domain, so you can have multiple domains all direct to the same website. A business that goes through a branding change may add a new domain to reflect their new branding, with their previous domain intact and redirecting to serve clients who go to their original domain name.
At Vivid Image we are ready, willing and able to help you register and renew your domains and also ensure that they don’t unexpectedly expire. We can help explain any of the information here, should something have peeked your interest. Contact us at [email protected] or (320) 587-8974 with questions.
