Whether you’re a business or home user, it helps to have the right type of email address at the outset? For business, having a personalised domain will give it more of a professional look; so john@hampton-plumbers.co.uk looks better than john987@talktalk.co.uk for instance and the first one tells us exactly what John does.
Secondly, if John decided to switch his Internet Service Provider (ISP) to Sky, his TalkTalk address in time would stop working and he’d have to let all of his contacts know of the change together with the additional marketing costs with new stationery. Here’s my 3.1 guide for choosing the right email address for both the business and home.
1) Never sign up a personal email address that’s directly linked to your ISP. Unless you know for sure that you’re going to stay with that ISP for life (which is very unlikely), it makes no sense to sign up a new email address with them. It’ll only give you extra work and hassle of changing at a later date. So choose a domain that’s not linked to an ISP such as gmail.com and outlook.com. I can highly recommend gmail.com as this offers fantastic spam filtering. This way, no matter where you are in the world and who your ISP is, you can continue to use the same email address.
2) If you run a business, personalise your domain that says something about you; like kingstonplumbers.co.uk and pcresq.co.uk for instance. This is a personal preference as some companies prefer to go down the branding route which can also work very well. A good example of this is Google & Amazon. If you ask people today what’s the first thing that comes to mind when you say the word Amazon; I don’t think too many would mention the Brazilian rainforest! You can buy a domain from websites like 123-reg.co.uk or fasthosts.co.uk.
3) If you’re dealing with UK customers only, I’d strongly advise that you choose a ‘.co.uk’ extension and if you can, buy the ‘.com’ equivalent just in case you do expand overseas or if someone types in a ‘.com’ by mistake, you can always re-direct them to the main ‘.co.uk’ site.
Another domain extension that we’ve registered for PC ResQ is the ‘.mobi’. This is an extension that could be used for mobile devices in years to come. The way I look at it is that it’s far cheaper to get it now instead of buying it from someone else in the future who’s just bought it to sell on at a profit.
3.1) Another domain I’ve personally registered is my own name – hefinharries.co.uk & hefinharries.com which simply forwards to the PC ResQ website for now but who knows what I’ll be doing in 10 to 15 years’ time! I’m fortunate to have a very unique name but you might want to consider buying yours now before someone else does.
