With the availability of several website builders these days, individuals and businesses are able to develop their websites on their own. On one hand, this saves them the cost and time of hiring a full-time web developer. On the other hand, some people try to save so much cost that they don’t even spend on purchasing a personal domain.
Having a personal domain for your website is important. After all, your website acts as your brand identity and should be named after your brand or business name. If your website builder’s name is included in your domain, it is difficult for your users to remember it.
Today let’s talk about the importance of having a personal domain for your website.
Benefits of Having a Personal Domain
There are several benefits of investing in personal domains for your personal or professional website.
1. It Gives Your Business More Professional Look
When you have a personal domain, your business and your website appear more professional. Even a layman knows these days that you need to invest a small amount of money to purchase a domain. Thus if you do not invest this amount, everyone who sees your website URL will assume that you are probably short on cash.
This is not good as it does not build a positive impression of your brand. People know that those who are serious about their business do spend money on minor things like this.
2. It Protects Your Copyrights and Trademarks
Having a personal domain helps you protect your copyrights and trademarks. If you purchase a personal domain, you would probably choose the same one as your brand name. In a way, this makes you claim the ownership of your brand name. Nobody is then allowed to use the exact same name for their brand without your permission.
If your website is built on a default URL given to you by the website builder you use, you won’t easily claim your trademarks and copyrights. You need to show that your brand name is exclusively yours, and for that, it needs to match your website’s domain name.
3. It Builds Credibility
The more credibility you have, the easier it will be for you to convert your website visitors into leads and customers. Getting a personal domain shows how serious you are about your business. It reveals to your audience that you believe in your business initiative enough to invest in developing a brand. It signals that your company will be around for a long time. It shows your confidence in your business idea, which makes it easier for your prospects to believe in you as well. This, in turn, makes your site visitors comfortable in placing their trust in your products.
Personal domain names help you build credibility. It is worth spending a few dollars on purchasing and renewing your domain every year to show your audience how much your business means to you.
4. It Increases Brand Awareness
When you use a personal domain for your website, it is easier for your site visitors to remember it. If you simply use a default domain, your customers won’t be able to identify your website’s URL with your brand. The former is much better for you for various reasons.
If you want your site visitors to spend time browsing through your web pages and come back to visit your website again, it is best to have a short and simple personal domain name. This will prevent your visitors from forgetting your website’s URL so that they can visit your site any time they like. When they visit your website multiple times, it will increase your brand awareness.
5. It Boosts the Search Engine Positioning of Your Website
Using a personal domain also boosts your website’s search engine ranking. Google views your website as unique and valuable, as it will be seen as contributing to the World Wide Web productively.
To boost your site’s SEO further, you can use other tactics like adding relevant keywords throughout your website content, tags to your headings and text, writing a proper and precise site description, and publishing much content across the internet.
6. It Improves Your Online Marketing Efforts
Personal domains help your website get discovered more easily. That enhances your brand equity. A personal domain creates a very good impression about your business when you send newsletters to your subscribers. Even when you do social media marketing, a personal domain makes it easier for your followers to remember your website’s URL and visit it.
By using a personal domain, you make a strong brand statement in favor of your online business. It makes your business and its online presence appear more legitimate. If used together with the right keywords in your web content, it will make your brand and website stand out in the competition.
7. It Enables You to Create Custom Email Addresses
Personal domain names enable you to create custom email addresses. These really boost the rapport of your business and make your website appear professional. When you use custom email accounts, your business appears bigger than it actually is.
Sending marketing emails from custom email accounts is like promoting your own brand instead of the giant third-party brands like Gmail, AOL, or Yahoo. Personal domains allow you to create multiple email addresses to use a different email account for a different purpose. For example, you can create a separate email address for post-purchase customer support and a different one for responding to pre-purchase inquiries. These can be support@yourbusinessname.com and sales@yourbusinessname.com, respectively.
If you do that, your customers will feel that they are getting a response from a well-established company with professional staff. It will show to your existing and potential customers that you take your business emails seriously.
How to Use a Personal Domain With Strikingly?
Strikingly is a fast-growing website builder with hundreds of active users, including organizations and individuals, who have created a website for their business on our platform on their own, without the help of a web developer.
We offer all the features in our free plan necessary for you to build a basic website. When you first create a website on Strikingly using our Free plan, your domain name will include our branding. Here are some examples of sites that use the Free MyStrikingly.com URL and not personal domains.
1. Paul Zheng
Image taken from Strikingly user’s website
This is a portfolio website. The domain name is ‘paulzheng.mystrikingly.com’.
2. Little Helpers
Image taken from Strikingly user’s website
This is a professional website built to showcase the services of this organization. It is using the domain name ‘littlehelpers.mystrikingly.com’.
To use a custom or personal domain, you’ll need to upgrade to any of our Premium plans. To register your custom domain with Strikingly editor, follow these steps.
- From the site editor, go to ‘Settings’ and select ‘Domains’.
- Click on ‘Register New Domain’.
- Your existing domain will be replaced with your new personal domain.
To better understand this, let’s have a look at some personal domain name examples. These will also give you personal domain name ideas, in case you are in the process of choosing a domain name for a personal website.
3 Personal Domain Name Examples
Here are three examples of websites built on Strikingly that are connected to personal domain names.
1. Vencat Capital
Image taken from Strikingly user’s website
This is a website for a venture capital firm that uses a personal domain based on the firm’s name.
2. Nithi Foods Company
Image taken from Strikingly user’s website
This is a website for a catering company, using a personal domain that’s identical to the company name. They offer ingredients and spices to packaged food manufacturers and meat and snacks in bulk to warehouses and distributors.
3. Mark TSE
Image taken from Strikingly user’s website
This is a personal website built by one of our users, who has given a professional look to his personal site by using one of our attractive templates. He uses a personal domain that he has registered with us, which has helped him get substantial traction to his site over a short period.
These personal domain name examples show you the impact that using a personal domain has on the overall look and impression.
Now that you understand how personal domains work and how vital they are to your brand, you can start the process of planning to build your website on a personal domain.
If that’s the case, the first thing you need to do is list down a few personal domain name ideas. Once you finalize what name you want to put, you’ll have to check if it’s available or taken. It is usually quite disappointing if you take days to choose a name, just to find out that it’s not available. That’s why it’s always better to keep a few backup names in mind as well. The more unique your brand name is, the easier it is for it to be available.
After purchasing your personal domain, you can select a suitable website builder like Strikingly and start creating your personal website.
