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One in four small businesses has concerns over whether they made the right choice when picking their web address and one in three believes they could bring in extra revenue by changing it to something else, reports New Business.

I’d have to agree. I come across some right stinkers. Although there are very few available names to go around, my personal pet hates are:

Bad TLD (top level domain) choice

To get the right name, many companies move into the massive grey void of the alternative domain choices (.uk.com, .eu, etc.) If you are in the UK, selling to the UK, you should be getting a .co.uk. A person will try and find you automatically trying .co.uk or .com.

You also have to think about the perception that your TLD gives off. For example, I discussed .biz with a group of people recently and the consensus was that it comes across as very Mickey Mouse.

Initials

Back in the early days people had the impression that your domain name had to be short so people could remember it. If you think about random letters, how many can you remember and get the letters in sequence. How about next week, or next month? Isn’t it easier to remember a longer but more memorable name? www.basingstokebusinessnews.co.uk. Another advantage of these domain names is the potential use of keywords in your name - good for SEO.

Hyphens

Tricky one this because there is good and bad use. We have “the-escape” and it does bother me sometimes because when I am telling people my address it sounds like this, “the escape dot co dot uk with a hyphen in, t-h-e-hyphen-escape-dot-co-dot-uk”.

Example of both hyphens and initials: www.m-a-m.co.uk

What To Do

Firstly, I wouldn’t rush into a decision, especially if you have an established domain.

Secondly I would look for variations of your company name and come up with a few options. escapeonline, escapedesign, escapeweb, etc.

Then, test them on people. Leave the names with them to mull over. One may become a grower.

Lastly, if you do change your domain to a new address, you must make sure the proper redirecting is in place so you may transfer your existing domain weight.

Final thought. It may be worth spending the money to buy a good domain name. It may cost a few thousand but it is an important asset. Sedo have lots of names for sale, I’ve just bought one myself.

I love Macs. Well to be more precise, I like the software. My actual Macbook Pro (I’m on my 3rd) is as flakey as the Singing Detective.

There is no denying they make innovative products though. The Mac, iPod, and now the iPhone.

But, is it just me getting fed up with their smug advertising campaign? Here’s the latest one from the US:

The BBC report today that we are facing a web slowdown by 2010 due to lack of infrastructure.

For users, the slowdown could see a return to the bad old days of dial-up, the report predicts.

Well, I have a few thoughts about this.

Firstly, it’s bloody slow as you like now at times. We have three separate 8Mb lines at the office and I have a 2mb line at home and sometimes, they can be rapido. But, at other times, I may as well be staring out the window looking at the grey Basingstoke skyline and my colleagues often have to put up with me shouting, “I can not work in these conditions”, like Christopher Biggins having a hissy fit.

Secondly, marketers like to show-off. They hear about video this and web 2.0 this and load their websites to high heaven with all sorts of unnecessary gimmicks. Yes, by all means have video, but make it load on request!

Final thought, we can all see the web is the way forward. Someone, somewhere needs to put the money in - estimated to be £66bn globally.

Personally, looking at some of the habits of my friends [even], I am not suprised that the way we are communicating is changing.

News (via BT Blog) from Hitwise, citing that the use of social networks has overtaken online e-mail for the first time last month.

Age does play a part, with older users still preferring e-mail. But, with the ease of use, and an almost centralising of communication that platforms such as Facebook bring, it makes sense to connect (at least on a personal level) using social networking tools rather than using mutiple single purpose tools such as e-mail.

I have been tempted to the free web stats package that is Google Analytics having been a massive fan of Hitslink for so long, which costs from $10 per month.

Cost wasn’t the main reason though. I have always been put off by Analytics delay in delivering results and it’s more generic feel. It does what I guess it should - displays less specific reporting information to gather trend data.

There are pros and cons for both systems however:

Hitslink

Pro

• It’s real time allowing you to be very responsive*
• Easy interface allows you to drill down into the nitty gritty data
• More comprehensive reporting with multiple graph views for data - houry, daily, weekly, monthly, etc.

Cons

• It costs - prices start at $10 per month - e-commerce measurement is more expensive
• Can’t discern between pay per click and natural search traffic
• Code needs hacking to deal with pay-per-click visitors otherwise each PPC visitor page is seen as different from the actual page, confusing the stats

(* I find this very helpful with a new e-commerce solution to track where a specific order came from. This feature also helped me sell a lot of a specific product once when it was reviewed one Sunday morning in a newspaper magazine.)

Analytics

Pro

• Free and easy to set up
• Ability to set goals allows you to optimise your site more effectively.
• Integrates with Pay Per Click automatically -allowing you to measure natural vs. PPC visitors

Cons

• It’s about three hours behind real time
• The data is sometimes to generic, requiring you to keep drilling down too far
• Lack of incremental reporting - ie. month on month

Summary

I find my transition to Analytics works very well with standard websites, but I feel uncomfortable with the delay in reporting for my e-commerce sites and would tend to actually run both. This isn’t the best answer as it may slow down the website running the stats.

The delay of reporting that Analytics has, has allowed me to to take a bigger picture view of my websites checking stats once a day, rather than every few hours.

Every person who cares about success on their website should be measuring their stats. Analytics is a great product, especially the price tag, and delivers data that, without a doubt, can help you improve your website. Any start-up should load this product and learn how it works.

However, when it comes to e-commerce, my nerves tell me to have Hitslink for the real time response. There’s nothing like running a sale alongside an e-mail campaign and adapting the messages as results happen.

Keith sent me this article from the Wall Street Journal about mobile phone internet browsing and how it is coming of age. One of the main reasons being that providers, who previously redirected you to their own web offerings only, are having to allow generic browsing. The article compares the situation to how AOL tried (in the late nineties) to restrict peoples movement around the web with its own community.

I for instance, use Vodafone, but when I go through their web access, I am sent to all the Vodafone stuff I have no interest in, and it they thing that stands out is that they are trying to sell me more… ringtones, wallpapers, etc. Their browser also restricts me from certain websites that I want to see.

Of course, there is so much info out there that we want what we want, when we want it… especially when we know it is ther and that, surely, is the ONLY way the mobile web can go. (more…)

Nominet has registered its six millionth .uk domain name, with the national country code attracting a growing number of domestic companies. (e-consultancy)

I am often asked about the best domain suffix to go for ie. .com, .co.uk, etc. and my answer usually requires the buyer to know their longer term strategy. I am a great believer that if you are servicing the UK, you should stick to a .co.uk and a .com should be used for internationally based businesses as it makes simpler sense to the end-user. (more…)

When you are sitting down on your PC, looking at the words on your screen on a website that has a nice design, you may be forgiven for thinking that everyone does the same and, of course, you would be wrong.

So, when web coders, have also added in abbreviations and acronyms with thought for accessibility, you’d think think it could only be a good thing but as the Web Access Blog on the RNIB website explains, you can go too far for those with screen readers.

Andy pointed me to this article on the Innocent blog about Google, the amount of energy saving that would occur if Google made their screen black, and what they did with it.

I wouldn’t turn A Webby Award down, who would? But if this website from Ikea has the best navigation and structure then I will quite readily eat my accessible know-nothing pants.

Yes, a nice bit of opera blaring out and a lovely little  flash animation is great the first time, but what about the second and the third. In fact, despite the fact that there are a lot of amazing websites out there, the winner’s list does not inspire me.

That said, I am pleased to see the BBC winning some accolades though - good old Auntie!