Starting in business we are eager to get our telephone number found and to have all lines of communication open. After all, what we need is customers, and if no one can contact us we will not get any.
Right at the start we will put our email address in the local magazine or newspaper. At the beginning it may well be a personal email address. We all have one of those. However if after the first few weeks and months we still only have our personal email address available for potential customers, it starts to look as though we are not serious. People are used to businesses having a domain on that internet-web thingy. Having a domain makes the business look more serious.
I happen to believe fervently that all businesses should have a website, but that is probably another blog post. Even if a business does not have one though, it should still have a domain so that it can have a serious-sounding email address.
I own a number of domains, each of which is special to one of my business ventures, and each of which does actually relate to one of my websites. However, each email address I have says something about my business without anyone going to look at the sites; each one says I am serious about what my businesses do.
The other day I saw an accountant on LinkedIn using an email address along the lines of beezeraccountants@live.com. No, it doesn’t go anywhere so don’t try clicking it. There is another professional firm not far from me that uses a private email address something like taxchap@aol.com. That firm doesn’t have a website.
Even some businesses with websites don’t utilise the domain for email. An example would be www.reallywhizzyflorists.com advertising an email address such as reallywhizzyflorists@yahoo.com. It doesn’t sit right. To quote John McEnroe “You cannot be serious”.
You always get one email address with a website package, and you may get hundreds you don’t need. But for the price of less than $20 a year, you can probably own a domain and get all the email you need through a professional email address even if you haven’t got round to building the website.
To be serious about a business you have to look serious in the right way. Not unprofessional. Don’t you agree?