Archive for the ‘Domain Registration’ Category

In this age of the internet, where much business is transacted or promoted over the internet, keeping your domain names safe can be absolutely vital, with some big domain names changing hands for multi-million dollar sums in recent years.

We had a recent upsetting case of a well-established owner, with a business name like somebusiness.com, finding to her dismay that one of her competitors had registered a .au domain of the same name – somebusiness.com.au.  Understandably she felt that her competitor, a much smaller business with lower quality standards, was trying to trade off her good name.  At the time she’d set her website up, we remember suggesting she consider registered the .com.au domain, and now she’s in a difficult position, with little chance of recourse. Read the rest of this entry »

Have you ever tried to start your car with your house keys? How about using your office key to unlock the front door of Westpac afterhours? You’d never think of it right… or would you?   [Don't answer that!] … Read the rest of this entry »

An important word of caution – White Dog Green Frog will never send you a mailed letter about your domain renewal. Our customers have been getting a fair amount of these letters lately from other organizations such as Domain Renewal Group or one received just the other day from Domain Name Group… Read the rest of this entry »

Choosing the right domain name for your business is really important, and it’s something you should be checking constantly while you’re looking for a suitable name for your business.  Several times people have come to us with new businesses to get their website developed, and it’s been very hard or impossible to find a domain name sounding anything like their business name and they’ve had to settle for an ugly compromise! Read the rest of this entry »

These days, email has become the way a lot of business is done, yet many small companies are forfeiting the advantage that having their own domain and email address (info@yourbusiness.com rather than yourcompany@bigpond.com or worse, yourcompany@hotmail.com) brings to the table.  I always know when I’m dealing with a company with an email address of yourcompany@bigpond.com that it’s a probably 1-man band or that they simply haven’t been able to harness technology effectively yet.  Perhaps they will in the future, but in the meantime I have doubts about doing business with them that have nothing to do with their expertise in their field, which may be first class!

Here are some of the advantages that having email under your own domain brings:

1.  Better Spam control

Despite having many email addresses, I get well under 10 spams a week from our many email addresses combined.  If you are suffering from Spam overload, talk to us; our experienced team has a variety of solutions and our default email system has most of them included!

We have solved spam problems for many companies through a variety of solutions, some of which are surprisingly simple.  As just one quick example, there are times when a change of email solves spam problems completely, other times simply not publishing your main email address on your website where the baddies can “harvest” it and add it to their lists is enough.

2.  Convey a professional appearance

Having your own domain conveys a sense of professionalism and seriousness about your business right off the bat.  Wouldn’t you prefer to do business with a company that is committed to itself?  Remember first impressions can be very important in business, and an email address mentioning hotmail, yahoo or bigpond conveys a definite impression of being a one person company. (Note that this doesn’t apply as much to gmail which is often used by professionals even in large companies)

While none of us want to project a false impression that our companies are much larger than they are, projecting the impression that you are smaller than you are is just as false and doesn’t serve you or your customers well.

3.  Be independent from your ISP
Read the rest of this entry »

If you aren’t on the web, which competitors are your clients calling?

How many people are ‘stopped’ about getting a website because it’s too expensive … too hard … don’t have the time to think about it … not that important?? Consider how many opportunities you have lost in the past week by not having a web presence.

While it can be a little daunting it’s actually a very straight forward process. – A web address or domain name ( $20 – $50); some space on a reliable server with solid backend systems admin so it’s available to your customers all the time (from $130/yr); and coherent and engaging content on the site (priceless!).

So how to come up with that! – We always ask our customers which sites they like to visit and why. Try asking yours what questions they like to have answered before they call or come in.

Perhaps the most important aspect of your website is simplicity and beauty! Like a great work of art, the imagery must reach the ‘good-feeling-place’ of the visitor. People base their buying decisions on their feelings and especially a sense that your product or service will have them feel better than they currently do.

It’s also important to realise that your website is also like your shop front. Just as you’d never want your customers to visit a tatty old shop front with rubbish all over the pavement outside, a website that has a clean fresh feel about it is more likely to have your customers take a step or two further to investigate. A bad vibe will have them out of there in a click!  We all know about selling the benefits of our services; a good trick here is to use the common questions your customers ask as the guide to what to put on your site.

If you want people to buy your product/service, Read the rest of this entry »

There have been spam emails that are circulating with regards to domain names and the .cn extension. A .cn extension is similar to the .au extension at the end of a domain name only instead of Australia, it is the country extension for China. Recipients of the email are instructed to act right away as this is the “final contact” as such to acquire the extension.

Now, unless your target market is extending to China and a need for Chinese presence is important, you can safely ignore these emails. If you have registered your domain with us, we will be the only company contacting you. We, too, have received this very email and want to keep our customers informed that this rather obscure marketing by instilling fear is a hoax.

Do not be fooled by these email attempts to lure you into purchasing something that you do not want/need!