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How to Compare Web Hosting Services

It’s one of the most significant choices you’ll make regarding your online presence. Your web hosting service can be the difference between presenting a reliably robust site and one that spends more time down than up. For this reason, gaining a good understanding of how to conduct a hosting compare is essential to your success in this regard.

Here are few key things to look for.

 What Your Site Needs to Do

Before you can make any sort of a comparison, you must first have a clear idea of what you need. If you’re building a huge eCommerce site with the potential of drawing Los Angeles rush-hour traffic you’re going to need a lot of bandwidth, a lot of storage capacity and exceptionally robust security protocols.

 How Unlimited Is Unlimited?

While you’ll see a number of providers toss that term about, the reality is unlimited is provisional at best. Delve into the terms of service and you’ll usually find unlimited is indeed unlimited—up to a certain point. Again, if your site is going to be drawing lots of traffic, you want to make your chosen host’s “unlimited” is the most unlimited you can get.

Conversely, if your site is a basic one with only few pages and light traffic, you won’t have those concerns. Going forward, if you need more features, what are the upgrade options? Additionally, how responsive is the server? Slow load times can cost customers as people grow more impatient about waiting for sites to load every day.

 Is That Introductory Rate Really a Good Deal?

A lot of companies offer super low “introductory rates, only to jack the price up substantially after the trial period ends to make up the difference over the balance of the contracted period.

And oh, by the way, to get that super low rate you may well have to agree to a three-year contract to ensure they have time to recoup that loss leader pricing. In some cases, renewal fees can be as much as four times the sign-up rate. What’s more, can you get a refund if you’re not happy with the service?

 When, Where and How Support is Provided

It’s more a question of when support will be needed, as opposed to whether support will be needed. Problems have a nasty habit of developing in the middle of the night in the middle of a weekend—during your biggest sale of the year.

When it’s your turn to deal with it, you’re going to want to get a live body on the phone to talk you through the solution. That’s why anything less than 24/7/365 live support is simply not good enough. You also want to know the provider’s average response time to problems.

Speaking of downtime, what are the host’s server reliability and uptime guarantees? You also need to take a look at the site backup options to ensure you can get back online quickly if yours crashes.

As you’re considering how to compare web hosting services, examining these factors will help you choose the best provider for your needs today—and into the future. Speaking of which Yahoo Small Business hosting stacks up nicely in all of these regards. Check it out today!

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    Provider Yahoo Small Business Advisor

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Signs of Bad Web Hosting

You’ve done everything possible to optimize your site. It loads quickly, ranks highly on search engine results pages and your customers rave about the user experience. Still, even with your most diligent efforts to the contrary, it’s possible to get hooked up with a subpar hosting service. To help you catch it as soon as possible here are some of the signs of bad web hosting.

Excessive Downtime

This, of course, begs the question—how much is too much when it comes to downtime? Truthfully, any downtime at all is too much. But to quantify it, if your site is experiencing more than one percent downtime, you need a new provider. This is particularly true if you can’t do business when your customers can’t access your site.

Bandwidth Restrictions

Frankly, there is really no such thing as “unlimited bandwidth”. Much like airlines, hosting providers overbook their services, counting on fluctuations in usage to cover their backs. However, this can become a real problem during peak seasons. If you read your terms of service carefully, you’ll find the true allocation you’re given. If it looks too low to handle peak loads, you’ve got a bad web host.

Slow Load Times

Most web users will only grant your site three seconds to load. Any longer and they’ll bounce out of your site to look for one with more expedience. Further, Google now ranks slow loading sites lower. If you’ve done everything you can to streamline for speed and your site is still loading slowly, the problem is likely to be with your hosting service.

Scaling Limitations

As your business expands, your site’s needs will too. It’s going to need more storage capacity, more email addresses, more backup capacity and more bandwidth too. If a service provider isn’t ready to grow along with you, that’s one you shouldn’t consider. Why build your site on a platform that won’t scale, only to have to move when it gets too big for that provider?

Security Lapses

If your users even get a whiff of a security issue, they’ll abandon your site like the proverbial rodents fleeing a floundering craft—and justifiably so. If it can be determined you failed to provide adequate security in the wake of a hack, you could be on the hook for lawsuits as well as the loss of your business. If the likes of Target and Neiman-Marcus can be hacked, it can happen to you. A competent hosting provider should offer you firewalls, SSL support, and DDoS safeguards, along with anti-virus and malware protection—at a minimum.

These are five of the most significant signs of bad web hosting. Other aspects to consider are the absence of routine backups, lousy customer service, weak tech support, lack of MySQL databases, poor maintenance, ineffective spam filters for email and no support for add-on domains.

Now, with all of that said, you can’t always judge the quality of a host based on price. Cheap web hosting doesn’t always mean bad web hosting, just as a high price does not guarantee stellar service. Do your homework to ensure that you choose the best web hosting service for the price.

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Provider Yahoo Small Business Advisor

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Improve Your Website's Branding with New Domain Extensions

Guest post by Alisha Shibli Radix Content Marketing Specialist

In today’s business world, few terms or concepts are as pervasive—even sacred—as your brand.  So, what is a brand, really? It’s not a logo or a slogan or the colors you choose. Your brand is the sum of others’ experiences with you. It’s all the emotions people conjure when they think of you.

How your brand feels to others is not completely in your control. But you can take steps to influence how your brand is perceived and deliver an experience that matches the audience’s positive perception to create brand resonance. Lately most of this experience is happening in the online world. So the question arises: Where is your brand in the digital space?

The short answer is that it’s everywhere.

The longer answer is that when it comes to the online world, your brand is anywhere people engage with you or talk about you. Usually, your website will be the main source of all conversations because it’s where customers come to learn about your company. This is one of the reasons why your web address has to be spectacular -- it’s creating  the first impression of your business.

As a consequence, brands are investing heavily in building a strong digital persona, with each new marketing campaign having its own website, microsite or a landing page. Amidst all this noise, it becomes more and more difficult to be effectively heard.

How Do You Brand Your Website?

The first step to website branding is getting the right domain name, more specifically, the right domain extension.

Over the last couple of decades, a multitude of businesses have claimed some really good domain names; forcing newcomers to scramble for a consolation web address. While this not-so-great web address might look like a reasonable solution on paper; in reality, it winds up being long, unwieldy, difficult to say or spell, and hard to print on business cards.

Luckily, where there used to be scarcity in online naming options, there are now more than 1,200 new domain extensions available. Options such as .TECH, .STORE, .FUN, .SPACE, .PRESS, .WEBSITE, and .ONLINE are doing an incredible job of making business web addresses look brandable, cool and functional.

It’s disheartening when the name you want isn’t available. That’s where these new options come to play. They are not just a last resort—they’re a primary choice for businesses as large as Emirates (www.emirates.store) and Google (www.abc.xyz).

New Domain Extensions are Branding Magic

“If a phrase is easy to say and spell, it can be as memorable—or more memorable—than single-word names,” says Margaret Wolfson, founder and creative director at River + Wolf, a verbal and visual branding firm based in New York City. “Using the final word of the phrase makes the name kinder on typing fingers, an important factor to consider in today’s world of digital media.”

One of the ways to make your name kinder and your branding more effective is to have domain extensions that define your core competence. That’s what makes your brand name more meaningful, memorable and searchable. Additionally, one of the biggest benefits of new domain extensions is that the most desirable names are likely to be available on relevant extensions such as .TECH, .STORE and .FUN.

New Domains for Branding Links or Shortened URLs

A branded link is simply a short link – a shorter version of a URL you want to share online (especially on platforms like Twitter with limited character limits) - built around a brand name or related term.

URL shorteners are a part of link management that should be considered for every business that is interested in establishing their brand and building a positive image. Branded links help to:

Direct your readers and visitors to updated, relevant content they are looking for

Avoid looking spammy and instead come across as someone who is ahead of the curve

Stand out on social media -- to say more in less characters

With URL shortening services, brands now have the option to use a shortened link that not only highlights their brand name, but also the content that they share; reinforcing brand awareness and enhancing their brand recognition.

New Domains for Branding Email Addresses

Your email address conveys a lot about your brand. It may seem like a tiny detail in the larger branding picture, but it’s supremely important. Having one of the new domain extensions as your website URL can help your brand stand out from the crowd. Your email addresses will start incorporating that domain extension, making your email look intriguing, reliable and trustworthy. In these times of information overload, anything that stands out will facilitate a better engagement rate.

New Domains for Branding Products or Services

If you’re selling products or services, particularly if you’re promoting them individually, then it’s a worthwhile investment to secure those names as domains in relevant domain extensions. These can be specialized landing pages for those products and guide your customers into a sales funnel, either on a separate site or your primary website. You can also redirect the domains to specific pages or sections of your website.

Amazon did this with the Kindle. The www.kindle.store redirects you to the relevant page on their main website.

In these innovative ways, brands are investing heavily in tools and resources that help them build a strong digital brand. For example, a motor brand launching a “fun” new car could choose carname.FUN and promote it heavily to hammer the positioning well in the consumer’s mind. On the other hand, a co-working space could choose a .SPACE domain to make the website address keyword rich, yet short and memorable.

The bottom line is: Your domain name communicates an integral message about your brand and influences your audience’s perceptions. New web addresses are flexible and meant to accommodate a wide range of uses. As the registrant, it’s in your power to register and use them as you see fit. So make the most of it!

Alisha is a Content Marketing Specialist at Radix, the registry behind some of the most successful new domain extensions available now through Yahoo Small Business, including .STORE and .TECH. You can connect with her on LinkedIn.

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Provider Yahoo Small Business Advisor

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What Your Email Address Says About Your Business

Is it right to base assumptions about people upon the way they dress? Can you really get insights into the personality of an individual based on the car they own? Whatever your feelings, your industry will make certain suppositions about you based upon your business email address.

What do we mean? Well, here’s what your email address says about your business.

There’s Shame in Your Game

Yes, there are plenty of free email hosts out there. And if you haphazardly adapt one of them to your business needs, you risk embarrassing yourself. If you didn’t think enough of about the potential of your business to invest in your own domain name, why should customers think enough of you to entrust you with their project? Further, the domain that you choose for your business can reveal quite a bit about your style and professionalism when it comes to the digital realm.

You Don’t Understand Simple Is Memorable

Let’s say your name is Frankie, you’re running an online bookstore, and your email address is FrankiesBookstore@AOL.com. Using that address, you’re asking people to remember unnecessary information that isn’t even part of your brand. Meanwhile, Frankie@FrankiesBooks.com or Sales@FrankiesBooks.com are far more memorable, tell everybody you own the business and says you’re adept with digital technology.

You’ll Be a Shill to Get a Free Deal

Every time you share a generic email address, your marketing dollars are being used to spread the name of another company. One, by the way, that is highly unlikely to be returning the favor. It’s a pretty safe bet that the provider of free email isn’t spreading the name of Frankie’s Books everywhere it’s seen. But you’re certainly doing that for them. When you have your own email domain, every time you give someone your email address, you’re promoting your business. If you’re looking at the cost of acquiring one as a superfluous expense, it’s time you rethought that position.

You Recognize The Key Benefit of Ownership

If you go with a generic provider, you’re going to have a hard time getting the exact prefixes you want. Let’s say you want something simple like Frankie@YourGenricDomainChoice.com. It’s a safe bet that it’s already taken.

When you own the domain, you determine which prefixes get used and how. You want Frankie@FrankiesBooks? It’s yours. You can also get Returns@FrankiesBooks, Customer Service@FrankiesBooks and any other thing you might think of.

When you own the domain, you make the rules!

You’re in Control

Ultimately, your email address says a lot about your business; how serious you are about it and whether you really want to be in control of your destiny. Are you willing to take definitive steps to own your brand, or are you going to leave something this important to chance?

You can take your brand firmly in hand with the business email plans at Yahoo Small Business. They’re easy to set up and affordable too. Get yours today!

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    Provider Yahoo Small Business Advisor

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Professional Email Address Guidelines

An electronic calling card of sorts, your email address makes a subtle, but lasting impression upon would-be clients and peers. If you’re doing business online and trading information via email, your choice of an address can help others perceive you as a responsible entity with whom they can reliably do business. No, SlickDaddy99@GenericHostingService.com simply isn’t going to cut it.

With that in mind, adhering to the following professional email address guidelines will get you a lot more traction in this regard.

Using Your Own Domain Is Crucial

Employing a generic email domain suffix is one of the fastest ways to say, “I’m running a fly-by-night operation on the cheap.” While there was a time when a custom domain was a “nice-to-have,” it is now a “must.” Wholly indicative of your professionalism, experience and dedication, you simply have to have a branded mail address in today’s business environment.

Beyond that though, spam filters tend to weed out nonspecific domain names. This can prevent your messages from reaching those with whom you need to conduct business. What’s more, because your email address appears everywhere you send a message, it’s one of the least expensive ways to generate marketing impressions.

Nicknames Are Tacky—Avoid Them

If you had to guess, what would you say SlickDaddy99’s interests are? Either nobody knows, or nobody wants to know. And that’s bad for business.

Why leave your reputation open to interpretation? Always go with your name. This lets your colleagues know the message is from you right away.

Within that though, the exact format you choose will be predicated by a number of factors. If your organization is large, you’ll likely need to include full first and last names to differentiate between the five different Seans you employ or the three Janes you have on staff. This is also a good way to make a smaller organization look larger.

Use Special Addresses for Various Functions

Addresses such as CustomerService@MyCompany.com, Information@MyCompany.Com and Sales@MyCompany.com, can be used to route messages to specific areas of the business, while maintaining the anonymity of key people—until they want to disclose their direct addresses.

In addition to being a useful security measure, this gives you the capability of having a single message sent to several people at once in any given department. Sales messages can go to your sales managers, Customer Service messages can go to your customer service managers as well as you so you can keep an eye on things and so on.

Keeping these professional email address guidelines in mind when you’re establishing your communications protocols will improve the image of your business and help it run more efficiently. With domains more affordable than ever and scams proliferating at an ever-increasing rate, using your own domain name is no longer an option, it’s standard operating procedure.

If you don’t have a profession email set up, visit Yahoo Small Business to get yours today! You can now get a free professional email account, and free one page website, when you register a domain name. So there’s no longer any reason to use a generic address for your small business.

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    Provider Yahoo Small Business Advisor

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Simple Tricks to Get More from Your Small Business Website

Looking at the websites of some of your larger competitors with deep pockets, you might be wondering how you can show as well as they do on the internet. Fortunately, there are a number of simple tricks you can employ to get more from your small business website. With these ideas, plus free design templates and reasonable hosting prices available, you can easily claim an outsized digital presence.

Emphasize Quality Over Quantity

Yes, the content of your site is indeed important to getting your story told. However, the functioning of your site plays a significant role as well. Focus your efforts upon building a high quality site with just the essential information, rather than a mediocre site with everything anyone could ever want to know about you. Your goal should be to produce an aesthetically pleasing, informative experience that your customers can access quickly and easily. To this end, you also want to emphasize fast loading times and mobile optimization through responsive design.

Know Your Customer

Step outside of yourself for a moment and consider your website from the customer’s perspective. If you’re too close to be objective, gather a group of people you can trust to be honest with you and ask what they’d want to know about your business. Survey your current customers to find out what they’d like to see you do better. These steps will help you develop an informative site; one capable of generating leads for your business.

Strong Images Speak Volumes

Well-crafted, original photography is a must when it comes to creating favorable impressions. Run pictures big so they serve as major design elements—especially if your product or service lends itself to visual representation. Be creative, think of all of the different ways your services can be depicted in pictures, then photograph the best ones. Video can be an especially useful tool as well. Combining the power of images, graphics and words, video helps you tell your story in a much more compelling fashion.

Bold Calls to Action

It’s helpful to think of your website as a salesperson who is on call 24/7/365. One of the first rules of sales is to “always be closing”. Devise incentives to give leads a reason to complete your registration form, buy your product, or ask for more information. Then, make those incentives key to your robust calls to action. Some ideas:

“Your Free Consultation is Just One Click Away, Sign Up Now!”

“First Time Shoppers Get a 20% Discount, Save Now!”

“Register in the next 15 minutes and Get $100 Off, Do It Now!”

Mobile Matters

As mentioned above, you absolutely want your site’s design to be responsive. In other words, it must adapt to show at its best, regardless of the device being used by the customer. Mobile has supplanted desktop as the platform of choice. Your site must perform well in a mobile environment, or your website will be missed by a broad segment of potential customers.

As for getting that professional look, with design templates like those offered by Yahoo Small Business, a crisp site can now represent you with very little effort on your part. When paired with these simple tricks to get more from your small business website, you will be solidly in the hunt with even your largest competitors. Go ahead, try it now!

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    Provider Yahoo Small Business Advisor

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4 Best Practices for Business Email

Most business owners understand that email is an essential tool for both internal and external communications. Sure, some people have adopted newer ways to communicate, including conferencing and instant messengers. But email never really goes away. It’s simply too important.

Yes, despite the overzealous marketing from collaboration platforms, email is still an integral method of communication for businesses of all sizes. It’s the perfect way to reach your customers directly and have conversations with coworkers. It is both easy to use and easy to manage. It does, however, come with its  own rules and etiquette. These four best practices for business email are sure to serve you well when writing your business emails.

Picking a Professional Email Address

The first thing you need to do is set up a professional email address for your company. Sure, you could just ask all your employees to handle work emails through their personal accounts. But is that really professional? You want to establish your business’ credibility from the start. Don’t risk the possibility of important work emails getting lost in the mix just as you start your business.

Instead, you should choose a business email service that addresses your company’s most basic needs. This includes online security, additional storage, contact management, calendar management and other helpful features. Yahoo Small Business, for instance, offers a free domain name when you sign up for a professional email address.

Using ‘Reply vs. Reply-All’ Feature

One of the most common mistakes in email  is hitting “reply” or “reply all” inappropriately.

Let’s say you are included on a company-wide email discussing changes to the vacation policy. You want to ask your boss if it is still okay to take a four-day weekend in April, but accidentally  hit “reply all” instead of responding to him privately. Now everyone in the office is privy to a private conversation between you and your manager. It’s embarrassing, and not to mention it’s poor email etiquette.

As a rule, you should only hit “reply all” when your response is valuable to everyone in the chain. If your response is only relevant to a few folks or something as simple as “okay, sounds good,” stick to “reply.”

Including a Signature

It’s important to include a signature on your emails. This provides vital contact information to clients and partners outside of your company. This will allow your network to easily reach you in case something comes up. An email signature should include your name, title, professional phone number and business address. Some people like to include a photo of themselves or a company logo in their signatures. This is fine, but make sure your signature doesn’t exceed four lines of text. An overstated signature might distract people from reading the actual contents of your email.

Depending upon your position and brand, it might be helpful to include your social media (such as LinkedIn or Twitter) links in your signature.

Keep Your Closing Simple

There are dozens of ways to sign your emails.Some of the most common sign-offs include sincerely, with regards, and best wishes. Some people may who enjoy experimenting with their closing depending on the mood of the email, and others who stick to one closing for all communications. But  which tactic is best?

Well, according to Money, a simple “thank you” will suffice. “Thanks” doesn’t come across as stiff, or cloying. It’s appropriate for practically every type of exchange — you can use it to end a note to anyone regardless of their level in the chain of command, department, or role at your company.”

Better yet, “Thanks” got a 62 percent response rate compared to 46 percent for non-thankful closings.

Follow the above tips when tackling professional emails. You’ll be happy you did. For more professional advice for your small business or affordable email services, visit Yahoo Small Business today!

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    Provider Yahoo Small Business Advisor

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So, How Do I Get a Domain Name for My Business?

Thinking of starting an online business?  You’ll definitely need to build a website, but  the first step you have to take is getting a domain name.

Many of you might be thinking; So, how do I go about getting the domain name for my business?

Well, you’ve landed on the right place! We’ll walk you through the steps required to get a domain name. But first, a tiny bit of background on why domain names are needed.

Domain Names Allow Us to Distinguish Sites

The number of worldwide websites exceeds one billion, and that number is growing by the second. Domain names allow humans to distinguish one site from another instead of having to use the long unique string of numbers known as an internet protocol (IP) address. Domain names are made up of the domain extension (i.e. “.com,”), the second-level domain (your website name), and a host name (www). Together, these details make up a uniform resource locator (URL).

Know the Domain You Want? Buy It!

After you’ve gone to great lengths to brainstorm a business name, you’re ready to buy. It’s wise to purchase a domain as a package with your web hosting, since you’ll need both anyway. This can usually get you a discount or spare the cost of the domain name altogether.

But wait, what if my domain name is taken?

You have options. You could come up with a new name, slightly modify the domain name with a suffix, or try a different extension than .com. You could also use Whois to contact the current domain owner and get their asking price. If the domain is privately registered, you could also use a broker to negotiate on your behalf. It all depends on how badly you want that name. At the very least, it doesn’t hurt to reach out. You’ll be able to tell from the looks of the site whether it’ll be expensive to purchase or not. There’s no market rate for buying a domain name from somebody. It could cost you $10, or in the case of insurance.com’s 2010 sale - $35.6 million!

Registering Your Domain

Now that you’ve purchased a domain you’re happy with, you need to register it. ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) lists 2,943 domain registrars, but there’s no reason to make a straightforward thing so difficult. Register your domain with one of the well-known providers, like Yahoo Small Business, and you’re done! Well, sort of. It’ll take a few days for your site to update in the Domain Name System (DNS).

That’s a wrap. Hopefully we’ve put the lingering question that brought you here: “How do I get a domain name for my business?” to rest.

Already have ideas brewing for your site’s name? Use Yahoo Small Business to choose your business domain name today.

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First Things First: Finding and Registering Your Website Domain

You just started your first business. You take every opportunity to chat about it with family, friends and even strangers. You carry around a little notebook to jot down ideas for products, and fall asleep thinking about process improvements. Your excitement makes you feel like you are ready to conquer the world.

Enjoying the entrepreneurial high  is a good thing. But don’t let it distract you from the some of the essential tasks in building your business, such as finding and registering your website domain name.

This oversight is more common than you might think. A fledgling business leader comes up with a brand name, a logo and a rough business model. Then they go online to purchase their domain name only to see my-super-cool-business.com is taken.

What’s one to do?

Luckily, there are options.

Use a Domain Search Tool

The first thing you’ll want to do is find out if the domain name you crave is available. Now, you could take the time to type in every permutation of your brand name into the address bar. But who has time for that?

A much better solution is to use a domain search tool. Just type your coveted domain name into the search bar and the tool will do the rest. You can see if your domain is available, if there are any applicable variations and how much the domain costs.

If you are ready to decide, just make your selections and hit checkout. You’ll be charged either monthly or annually—according to the provider’s terms of service.

Think Outside the Box

If you find the domain name you want is already taken, try tweaking it a bit. Instead of my-super-cool-business.com, you could opt for my-super-cool-company.com or my-ultra-cool-business.com.

Another idea is to add the industry in which you work. For instance, if you run a music magazine you could shift your domain request from latin-music-monthly.com to latin-music-magazine.com with very little effort. The same thing can be said for personal branding. Your-Real-Name.com might be taken, but Real-Name-Reality.com might be available and preferential.

Don’t be afraid to get creative. You might find a domain name that works for your organization better than just the brand name.

Purchase the Domain Name from the Owner

If you absolutely must have my-super-cool-business.com, there are a few options:

Find out who owns the domain either by contacting the site owner or using a service to help you.

Make an offer to buy the domain name, giving the owner some background about your operation. People might part with a domain name for a reasonable price when they understand you’re just starting up a small business.

If the owner is unwilling to sell you the domain, don’t give up, camp out! Domain names expire, especially when the owner neglects to pay their dues. If this is the case, you can often snag your domain name, or buy it at auction.

Finding and registering your website domain name this way is more expensive and time consuming. Your best course of action is a domain search tool when time and money are issues.

For more great tips on marketing your brand or building a small business website, visit Yahoo Small Business today!

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    Provider Yahoo Small Business Advisor

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Tips for Getting the Most Out of a Domain Finder

Indispensable to the process of securing a good name for your online presence, getting the most out of a domain finder is simply a matter of applying a bit of planning, research and creativity. Key to establishing authority and credibility, reinforcing your brand identity and promoting your business, the right domain name can absolutely make your business. However, finding a good one that’s not already taken can be a bit of a challenge.

These tips will help you get the most out of a domain finder.

 Think Creatively

At the last count, there were well in excess of one billion websites registered. This makes the odds of getting your first domain name choice with a .com pretty slim. While this extension remains the most desirable, there is now a wide array of new, more descriptive top-level domains (TLDs) available. If you exercise a degree of imagination, you can get the name you want—with a different extension. If yours is a blog site, try going with .blog. If you have a small restaurant, consider using .cafe. You can find a list of the currently available TLDs at a site maintained by ICANN (International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers).

 Keep it Logical

If you can communicate your domain name verbally without having to spell it out, you’ve got a good one. So basically, you’ll want to avoid using deliberate misspellings or slang. And yes, we know there are all sorts of trendy domain names out there breaking this rule, but they also have huge marketing and advertising budgets to ensure the world knows who they are. If you do too, more power to you. But your road will still be easier to travel if you resist the temptation.

 Keep it simple

Long, complex domain names invite confusion. Do you really want to type 26 characters into a web browser just to find a nice pair of shoes, when Zappos.com does it in 10? You also want to make sure the name you choose is easy to pronounce. People tend to have difficulty recalling words they don’t quite know how to say. Even if they’ll never speak your domain name aloud, making it easy to pronounce in their minds also makes it “sticky” for their brains. Another advantage of simplicity is it will usually be easier to spell. This makes users more likely to find you.

These three tips for getting the most out of a domain finder will help you come up with a name likely to resonate with your customers, while describing your business perfectly. The domain finder at Yahoo Small Business is easy to use, fast and you can conduct searches free of charge. Try it today!

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Essential Personality Traits for SMB Owners

While it’s true that just about anybody can be successful if they put their minds to it, certain personality types find the path to success easier to trod than others. The good news is even if you weren’t born with these essential personality traits for SMB (small or medium business) owners, you can develop them. Doing so is just as vital as having email for business.

Faith

There will be times when you’ll have to carry on in the face of unfavorable odds. In those times, faith, born of your desire to succeed, will carry you over the obstacle. A positive mental attitude is absolutely essential to success. If you think you can, you’ll try. If you think you can’t—you won’t. Also seen as confidence, faith in your ability to succeed is probably the most important of these traits.

Humility

With that said, you have to be careful to avoid having that faith come across as arrogance. You’re going to need people to help you along the way. Folks tend to respect quiet, unrelenting confidence. They abhor loud, obnoxious arrogance.

Don’t be THAT person.

Acknowledge those who help you and show gratitude. Remain grounded when success comes. Show grace in the face of acclaim and be humble about your talents.

Goal Orientation

The best way to accomplish any seemingly monumental task is to break it down into steps. But you must have a clear idea of what you’re trying to achieve to do so.

With goal setting, you can approach your endeavor bite by bite, rather than feeling you need to devour it in one great gulp. This also gives you a yardstick by which you can measure progress and milestones from which you can derive a sense of achievement along the way.

Passion

One of the easiest ways to be successful is to find something you love to do, learn everything you can about the subject, then set about monetizing what you’ve learned. Having a passion for what you’re doing makes it feel less like work and more like enjoyment. Earning a comfortable living doing something you love to do is a more than worthy goal.

Resilience

Everything you try won’t be successful the first time. Thomas Edison is reputed to have said he didn’t consider his unsuccessful attempts at the light bulb as failures; he considered them learning ways the idea wouldn’t work. While there will always be lots of reasons something won’t go, all you need to find is one way it will. You have to be willing to keep trying until it reveals itself.

Listening

Yes, the idea of the solitary figure who fashions a new reality from the depths of their imagination with their own hands is a pervasive one. While these individuals tend to be thought of as solitary figures, they generally aren’t. Steve Jobs didn’t invent the iPhone, he just recognized a great idea when he heard one.

Most successful entrepreneurs are geniuses with many helpers. However, they have to be willing to listen with an open mind, or a great idea can float right past them unseen.

A Kodak employee invented the digital camera in 1975, but the marketing team didn’t listen when they were told it represented the future. Having filed for bankruptcy protection in 2012, Kodak is now a shadow of its former self.

These six qualities are essential personality traits for SMB owners. People tend to believe successful people find success on their own. However, the reality is these qualities lead success to them.

For more tips, resources and your own business email address, visit Yahoo Small Business today.

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The Smart Way to Conduct a Web Domain Search

Location, location, location… This factor is just as important on the Internet as it is in physical space. However, when you’re talking digital, the destination is more about the name than the place. If you want your company to be easy to find, choosing the right domain name is the ideal first step. Still, there’s bit more to it than that.

Here’s the smart way to conduct a web domain search.

Think Search Friendly

Let’s say you’re selling fruit slicers. If somebody is searching the ‘net for one, the probability of them entering the term “fruit slicer” into a search engine is very high. If your domain name is FruitSlicer.com, guess whose site is going rank highly on the search engine results page?

While going literal in that fashion might strike you as being corny, it’s better to be corny and found, than clever and obscure. Before you begin to conduct your domain search, make a list of all the keywords relevant to your endeavor and get one of them.

Think Intuitive, Pronounceable and Brandable

In addition to searchable, think simple. Avoid using hyphens, numbers or anything else capable of complicating its appearance in the minds of the public. Similarly, even though the likelihood of your clients saying your domain name aloud is miniscule, it should “sound good” when they think it. This makes it easier to remember and is more apt to engender positive feelings.

If you’ve worked hard to create a brand around your business, it makes sense to extend it into your domain name. Getting back to our fruit slicer example, if you want to be the Kleenex of fruit slicers, use that name in everything that has anything to do with your business. Eventually, when people think fruit slicers, they will envision your products because it’s intuitive.

Think Short and Intuitive

The best play here is to keep it short enough to be easy to remember and spell, but not so short it becomes unwieldy. FruitSlicer.com is perfect. It’s succinct, memorable and describes the business. Plus, it’s difficult to misspell, which means your traffic is more likely to remain your traffic, rather than being siphoned off by a usurper capitalizing on spelling errors. It also makes perfect sense for somebody looking for a fruit slicer to consider it, so it’s intuitive.

Think Beyond .Com

Yes, there are all sorts of wonderful new extensions out there now and they present some rather clever naming opportunities. The vast majority of the public is accustomed to .com. It’s the most often used and easiest to remember. Still, if a .com isn’t available, you can always find a .biz or a .me instead.

Think Trademarks

Before you fall madly in love with a domain name, run a search to ensure it doesn’t violate an existing trademark. And yes, it is entirely possible to register a trademarked name for your domain if the owner hasn’t done so. However, that won’t make it yours. You can be sued and forced to change it. To that end, once you have yours locked in—trademark it.

Conducting a web domain search with these tips in mind will help you come up with something readily searchable, brandable, memorable and most of all—yours alone. Get started by visiting Yahoo Small Business today!

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Why Your Small Business Website Needs a Style Guide

The sheer number of elements comprising a typical small business website leaves open the possibility of all sorts of design inconsistencies. Meanwhile, one of the hallmarks of a trustworthy site is its appearance.

This is why your small business website needs a style guide.

Establishes Your Design Standard

A style guide document dictates the overall look of your website. Your style guide tells designers, writers and developers what colors should be used and where. It establishes the point sizes for headlines and body copy, as well as the fonts to be used. It also prescribes the voice of your content, the alignment and justification of text, and the sizing and placement of photography.

Puts Users at Ease

As we mentioned above, people tend to gauge the validity of a site by the way it looks. Design inconsistencies can have a definite effect on your users—whether they realize it or not. As they’re interacting with your site, they will feel that something is “off” when one page looks significantly different from another. While they might not be able to verbalize the effect, it will weigh upon their subconscious, creating confusion and leaving visitors thinking less of your brand.

Cuts Costs

Imagine a site of 100 pages or more with no governance regarding the appearance of buttons, form inputs, navigation systems, headings and body copy.

This is exactly what you’d get if you left the ongoing maintenance and updating of your website to a team of individuals with no clear parameters in place defining the usage and design of these items.

Now, consider how much it would cost in terms of designer costs and lost opportunity to go back through the entire site to correct those flaws. It’s far better to have a set of guidelines in place that the team can refer to ensure the main elements of your site look consistent.

Leaves Room for Expression

At first glance, working from a style guide might seem constricting and the recipe for a site with no variety. But that is not true. Every form of expression has guidelines to which it adheres in order to communicate effectively. Music works within a certain framework, so does architecture and every other type of art. Talented people find ways to express themselves within those guidelines. The same is true in web design.

What’s more, variation will happen organically. The different pages of a site serve different functions. Your home page looks different from your product landing pages, which in turn look different from your “team” and support pages, and so on. And yet, they all have certain features in common, unifying them as parts of a whole site. Ultimately, this is why your small business website needs a style guide.

The good news is many of the basic design decisions are already in place when you build your site with templates like those provided by Yahoo Small Business. Even better, they are also readily customizable so you can still get a look that is all your own—with no coding skills whatsoever. Turn your idea into a beautiful website today!

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How to Master Personal Business Email

Email is the lifeblood of today’s business landscape, but how many of us understand proper email etiquette?

According to research by the Radicati Group, office workers sent 36 emails a day in 2014. That number is expected to reach 43 in 2018. Combine that with expected average daily emails received to hit 97 and that makes for a whole lot of emails!

To ensure your emails reach their target with the messaging and feel you intend, check out these business email tips:

Provide Context - Maybe you met at a trade show or exchanged emails briefly while one of you was at another company. Whatever the case, remember to mention your connection.

Double Check Your Attachments - Hitting send on an email you’re proud of, only to realize you forgot to include the attachment is deflating. Even worse when you don’t realize your mistake and you contact has to send an email asking for the attachment. How embarrassing!

Avoid Becoming Spam - The above report estimates that 14 out of the average 97 daily emails be received in 2018 will be spam. This doesn’t count the amount of spam that email filters already pick up. Make sure your subject line is short and descriptive. Avoid using ALL CAPS and unusual fonts and colors, and limit embedded pictures or videos. Instead, create a template to ensure viewability.

Use a Legitimate Email Address – There are countless gTLDs (generic top-level domains) these days, but the 30-plus-year-reign of the “.com” extension is still the most recognized and preferred. Learn how to get a .com email.

Reply Proactively – Don’t reply immediately to emails. It’ll seem like you’re not giving the email proper thought. However, you should respond in a timely manner, usually within a day. If you’ll be away from your computer for longer, it’s best to create an out-of-office message. Be sure to set the message to only reply to emails in your contacts.

Avoid Overly Enthusiastic Tones – You might think you’re breathing fresh air into their day by typing “Amazing to hear!!!” or “I’ll be sure to do just that! ☺.” Overusing superlatives and exclamation points can irritate users, causing them to take your message less seriously. Instead, adopt a casual but professional tone that communicates a sense of warmth.

Proofread for Spelling and Grammar - This may seem like a given but many people rely on their email client to detect spelling mistakes. Still, this doesn’t solve grammar issues or awkward phrasing. Read your emails aloud before you hit send. If you struggle with writing but need to make a good impression, a tool like Grammarly may help.

Check Your Humor - Avoid humor in your emails. The only time it’s acceptable is when you’re emailing with someone with whom you already have a relationship. Otherwise, you can never predict how someone will respond to your humor, so it’s best to leave it out of the equation altogether.

Know How to Close – This doesn’t mean how to close the sale (though that’s important, too). Rather, how do you end your emails? Do you provide action items, or do you leave things unclear? If you’re looking for a reply back, state it. If no reply is necessary, say that too. It’s important to end with something professional, such as “Best,” “Kind regards,” “Thank you,” but you don’t need to overthink it. Anything professional-sounding will do. Lastly, make sure to include an email signature with your full name and contact information.

Knowing how to communicate professionally through email is an important tactic for any SMB owner and employee to master. Delivering customized messaging with proper etiquette will make your emails better received, net you more working relationships, and over time, can improve your business’ bottom line.

Keep checking Yahoo Small Business for all things related to SMBs!

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5 Tips for Choosing the Best Business Domain Name

Brainstorming business domain names is an exciting time. It’s the first step to launching your online business. But how do you choose the right one that’ll stick with searchers and contribute to your overall growth?

Deciding on a domain name isn’t something you want to do frivolously. The name you choose can impact your ability to rank for certain terms, affect how likely searchers are to click on your pages, improve your paid advertising, and even make it easier for searchers to type in your website directly, bypassing the search bar altogether.

The last thing you want is to be stuck with a website on a domain name that hinders, not helps, your online and offline marketability.

So get your thinking cap on, search for available domains, and check out these five tips below.

Your Domain Is Your Brand

The domain name you choose will be the lifeblood of your online property. How do you make that property stand out? You brand it. You want a name that describes what your company does while still sounding like a brand. Think of brands like Pinterest, Facebook, or Reddit. Their names all communicate what their brands do, and sound awkward or illegitimate like “Affordable Fish Tanks.”

Make sure to think through how it’ll sound. You don’t want to end up with a laughably bad domain name and be the butt of the internet’s joke. You should also avoid using special characters or dashes in your name. The less brand-worthy your domain name sounds, or the more ambiguity it communicates, the harder it’ll be for you to grow your online presence.

Brevity Is Best

A shorter domain name helps people remember, spell, and pronounce it. It will make it easier for people to talk about your business even when they’re sharing to their friends about interesting sites and businesses they’ve come across. Having a site name that can be easily communicated and thought of will contribute immensely both to your online and offline presence.

.com Lends Legitimacy

These days, there are countless TLD (generic top-level domain) extensions to choose from. However, getting that .com on the end still matters. Why? It’s the most recognizable and common TLD out there with a history spanning over 30 years. People are comfortable with the familiar. Domain extensions are no different. But if your chosen .com name isn’t available, there are lots of options.

Is It Legal?

Getting a letter from a trademark lawyer after the excitement of christening a new site probably isn’t the type of “ups and downs” you were expecting in the online business landscape. Make sure the domain name you want isn’t already trademarked by someone. You can search for this information on Trademarkia or Markify. Even hiring a trademark lawyer for questionable cases is money well spent, compared to being sued.

Don’t Give Up If Your Desired Domain Is Taken

If the domain you want is owned by someone else, all hope isn’t lost. Visit the site and see if it looks well maintained or vacant. If it’s well maintained, your odds of securing the domain aren’t great, at least for a good price. But if the site looks inactive or vacant, then the site owner will be more likely to want to sell it, and you’ll probably get a good deal. Use Whois to search domain name registrations. Once you find the site owner, inquire about purchasing. Know what you’re willing to pay and be firm with your negotiations. If you can’t find the owner because the domain is privately registered, you can use a broker to negotiate on your behalf.

Choosing a business domain name isn’t so different than choosing a business name in general. It needs to be brandable, memorable, reflective of your offering, legal, and legitimate-sounding,

Take your time deciding on your name. Seek outside opinion once you have a list with some potential winners. Gathering feedback from different viewpoints on how a name sounds will uncover angles you hadn’t thought of yourself. The more time you put into your name, the better it’s likely to be, which means a huge opening win for your online business.

Have some domain names you’re considering? Use Yahoo Small Business to check if your domain name is available.

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From Homeless Orphan in Uganda to Forbes 30 under 30: The story of Chris Ategeka and Rides For Lives

Meeting Christopher Ategeka in the high-rise business incubator where his three start-ups are headquartered in San Francisco, one would never guess that this urbane young man, named last year as one of Forbes Magazine’s 30 under 30 social entrepreneurs, started life in a thatched hut with dirt walls in rural Uganda—and was in his teens before he owned his first pair of shoes.

Imagine a nine-month-old baby in sub-Saharan Africa, taken away from his mother when his parents’ marriage dissolves. His father is a traveling merchant, who only occasionally returns to their village. The baby is left in the care of his paternal grandmother, a deaf-mute living in dire poverty. His grandmother is consigned to the profoundest social isolation in a place where illiteracy is the norm for women of her generation. Loving and resourceful, she has invented a private sign language, which she uses to communicate with her grandson (who, as a result, becomes preternaturally good both at expressing himself and figuring out what others are trying to say). She nurtures the infant on whatever milk she can barter for scavenged grain. He starts life holding tight to a precious kernel of knowledge that will help him throughout the harrowing years to come: there is someone on this earth who both loves and believes in him.

Christopher Ategeka didn’t even know precisely how old he was until he managed, on one of his business trips back to Africa, to unearth records that established the year of his birth as 1984.

 Raising His Family

By the time a child in America would just be starting the second grade, Chris had lost both his mother and his father to HIV-AIDS. When he was somewhere around seven years old he became the de facto head of his household. “An age,” quips the UC Berkeley engineering graduate, “when American children usually aren’t expected to cross the street by themselves!” He became the eldest male in a household that included his grandmother, various other relatives and his four step-siblings, all living together in a mud house without electricity, plumbing or any of the luxuries taken for granted in the developed world. Water had to be hauled by hand or carried atop one’s head, walking for hours down dusty roads. Food was scarce and hard to come by. Finding enough food for survival was the focus of every day. “I worked in gardens, weeding, harvesting, lawn mowing, grazing animals and collecting trash in exchange for food,” Chris told Yahoo Small Business, “and later started to get paid cash.”

The youngster worked hard, both to keep himself alive and take care of his siblings. “I started off with the help of grandma and other relatives—then the kids were passed on to me.” With some adult helping hands, he was able to construct a mud hut that he and his siblings could subsist in on their own. “It’s still there today,” Chris told us with obvious pride.

Child-headed families are common in Africa because of all the children orphaned by AIDS, malaria, cholera and now Ebola. “There are millions of them,” says this up-and-coming star of the global service community, “because the immediate relatives can’t afford to add five kids of the recently passed-away relative on top of their own already over-large family.”

When Chris was around twelve, each of the children in his little household was sent off to live with a different relative. The uncle who got Chris, a farmer who was none too happy to find himself with another mouth to feed, decided to make use of his nephew as a human scarecrow. It was the job of this child—who would, in 2014, be recognized for his global service by the United Nations—to stand for hours in a crop field as dawn broke, throwing rocks at predatory birds, chimpanzees and baboons, until it was time for him to set out, barefoot, on his hours’ long walk to school.

To survive such a childhood is amazing. To survive such a childhood to become a renowned inventor, honored at the White House, lauded worldwide for products that save lives and make the world a better place—well, that is more than extraordinary.

 A Defining Incident

There was one incident, among the myriad scenes of horror, fear and loss, that would haunt Chris forever and become the inspiration for his career. One of his younger brothers became very ill. Improvising a gurney of sorts from a piece of cloth, the children tried to carry their brother to the nearest healthcare facility, which was many miles away. He died in their arms as they struggled to get him to a doctor or nurse who could, without doubt, have saved his life.

If only there had been a better way to transport him, a way that would be within reach for even such a desperately poor family as his own!

This was the moment when the seed for CA Bikes (now called Rides for Lives), the first of three companies founded by Chris, began to germinate inside the sleep- and food-deprived lad whose brilliant mind was mostly taken up with the moment-to-moment exigencies of survival.

“Talent is universal, but opportunities are not,” says Chris, who managed to earn both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mechanical engineering from the prestigious program at UC Berkeley in record time by developing a habit he still has now of working extraordinarily hard on very little sleep. “A seventeen-year-old computer genius in San Francisco is not any smarter than a seventeen-year-old kid in the jungles of Africa. They were just born on an uneven playing field.”

Y.E.S. Uganda, a church-based NGO and orphanage, found out about Chris’s plight and offered to help him keep going to school. And then funding came through to help one of the hundreds of orphans in their care to follow a college prep curriculum, rather than simply learning a trade. Chris was chosen.

Carol Adams, the founder of YES Uganda, reported on Chris’s progress to his American benefactors, Martha and Michael Helm. When they learned of the hike Chris had to take every day to get to and from school, they bought him a bicycle.

What had been daunting and painful suddenly became a matter of joyful ease. Chris used the time he saved every day to study hard. By the time he graduated high school, the Helms sent for Chris, now 20, so that he could live with them and attend college in California.

“I am the luckiest guy alive,” wrote Chris on a Reddit AMA that crashed multiple times with the outpouring of heartfelt responses to his tale. “I am living the dream—three meals a day!”

Chris Ategeka’s ambitions didn’t stop with his own safety and comfort. On temporary leave from his PhD program at Berkeley, he is nurturing three high-profile startups dedicated to helping others.

 Rides For Lives

One of these is San Francisco-based Rides for Lives, a highly innovative provider since 2011 of medical services in rural Uganda, with a field office in the country’s capital, Kampala. The company manufactures locally sourced, specially adapted medical vehicles—many of them designed by Chris—with the mission of improving access to medical care as well as creating economic opportunities for the country’s most vulnerable citizens, over 86 percent of whom live in remote areas. Chris spends half the year in Kampala overseeing the company’s operations, growing the fleet of bicycle ambulances and an array of other two- and three-wheelers specially adapted for the disabled. Local workers are hired and trained to manufacture these as well as Ride for Lives’ mobile health units, refitted buses that bring a general practitioner, a pharmacist, medicines and interventions to people without other access to medical care. Each bus is equipped with a fully outfitted onboard lab for HIV, malaria and cancer screening, as well as family planing services and preventive care. Lately the company has started using customized drones to deliver life-saving medicine to people who would not be able to get it otherwise.

 Two more startups

As if this weren’t enough to keep one person busy, Chris is co-founder with fellow Cal graduate Anwaar Al-Zireeni of a start-up biotech firm, Privail, which is developing point-of-care diagnostics for the early detection of infectious diseases, with an initial focus on HIV. Their goal is to provide simple and affordable tests that will enable patients throughout the world to take earlier action in seeking medical treatment.

He’s also founder and partner of New Focus Africa, an intensive mentorship and funding program designed to help mission-driven African entrepreneurs build better products and forge the connections needed for success. “We aspire,” says Chris, illustrating his point on a whiteboard, “to bridge the gap between the continent and the global startup ecosystem.”

 Startup and Entrepreneurial Advice from Chris Ategeka

We asked this inspiring entrepreneur for his top three pieces of advice for other people who have a great idea but aren’t quite sure how to turn it into a reality. This is what he told us:

Have a clear model with concrete goals

Set timelines and organize your tasks

Start with increments: make your plans for day 1, day 5, day 10—then day 30, day 60 and day 90 before setting your 5-year goal

What is it, we wanted to know, that allowed him, despite all his hardship, to become so successful.

“People like me,” he told us with stunning honesty, “are driven by fear. Not so much now, because I have multiple engineering degrees from Berkeley. But very much so for most of my journey. Fear that this new opportunity may not last…so you want to make the best out of every inch of it before it’s gone. Fear of letting people down—someone believed in you, sacrificed resources to make sure that you can be somebody someday. You don’t want to mess that up! Fear that you could go back to the hellfire you just escaped.” Chris says that fear kept him running forward, despite all the obstacles he met along the way.

We wondered whether there’s ever a conflict for him between making money and his overall goal of stretching out his arms to people who are still as destitute and miserable as he once was. “You can never help the poor if you are one of them,” he told us. “There is simply not enough philanthropic capital or foreign aid to solve Africa's problems, on the scale they exist, in the foreseeable future.” He is optimistic about the potential of a bottom-up, capacity-building approach for the future of Africa and the rest of the developing world. “To defeat Africa's challenges, we must harness truly sustainable and scalable models by creating jobs for Africans—giving them the tools to solve their own problems.”

Chris was commencement speaker for the graduating class of engineers in 2011 at UC Berkeley. He remembers that day as one of the best moments of his life. His grandmother, who is in her 80s now, couldn’t make it to the ceremony—and wouldn’t have been able to hear him, of course, even if she had. But he was able to show her the video when he came to visit her in Uganda. There he was, all bedecked in his blue cap and gown, smiling broadly, honored by an audience of thousands. “She was crying and very proud!” he told us.

A compelling story is essential for any entrepreneurial venture hoping to stand out among all the millions of start-ups in the world. We asked the founder of Rides for Lives to offer our readers the five most important things, in his opinion, that should be included in the origin tale of every entrepreneur. (Watch Chris’s TED Talk to see these five elements brought to life as he tells his own story!)

Funny—This makes it memorable

Personal—This shows your passion

Relevant—Relate to your audience

Authentic—Be real, be yourself

Transporting—Take the listener on a journey

Chris Ategeka has taken a long journey from the poverty and pain of his childhood in rural Uganda to his position now as a San Francisco-based engineer and visionary social entrepreneur. His dream, he confided, is to connect talented young people in places where their ideas and potential might otherwise go untapped—throughout the developing world—to sources of money and opportunity in places where both of these are plentiful.

With the hard-won knowledge he has of both worlds, Chris wants to dedicate his professional career to being what he calls an “opportunity/talent catalyst”—to give to others the gift that was given to him by people who could see beyond yet another child doomed by poverty and hunger to a life of scant potential. Talented young people everywhere, he passionately believes, deserve the opportunity to focus on solving the world’s biggest problems—and the world needs their ideas.

“This is what I would like to be remembered for,” writes this man much given to smiling, who is still only 30 years old. “Something I will be proud to talk about 50 years from now.” In a post-script, he added, “Let’s do another interview then!”

Author Barbara Quick

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