Domain Owl

The worst thing that can happen when a webmaster gets presented with a new project is to find that the client has already chosen the web hosting plan. This is because many website clients decide on a web hosting plan before seeing the site take shape. This is an error which can cost a project personnel, energy, time, and vital resources to correct.

The needs of a website change with template selection, affiliate program installation, open source application integration, and email and newsletter incorporation. The web hosting interface is the starting point for every administrative task. Web hosting choice should not always be determined by cost, however. But variable offerings can now eliminate sheer cost as a concern and drive the web hosting decision by the attributes it offers for HTML publishing and web project planning.

But whereas a neighborhood race driver knows the best shops to get parts at, the race car owner may insist on flashy parts, unneeded additions to the interior, and extensive add-ons. A webmaster can work with managerial choices of others, but where web hosting is concerned, the entire health of a website and its marketing campaign can hang in the balance.

Webmasters are clients of multiple web hosting companies at the same time. The ease of use of any web hosting plan carries the webmaster further in ever optimization goal. But often the we hosting plan of a new website must span the skills of all parties involved working on the site.

The orientation of the vertical elements, banner placement, and menu items can be a reflection of the power of a web hosting company. The synchronization of the email, the coordination of the domain name,  and the response time of page requests must be bundled in a price sensitive package.

One of the most common web hosting plans I suggest to new clients is the Godaddy economy plan. This can bundled with a domain name for a budget $1.99 domain name purchase with three months of development breathing room.

This menu can be dictated over the phone after a time, due to familiarity over the phone without reference to the website for clients and guest bloggers. Complex and unfamiliar pathways to a website or domain name manager are never a good sign with a web hosting purchase.

When GoDaddy publishes in semi-annual and holiday discount domain codes, it can be a great bundled bargain to obtain multiple TLD domains of the same base domain word company or brand. Occasionally subdomains and sub-TLD names can serve the website better than a compromised domain name choice.

The periodic discount option to obtain privacy services can be invaluable when managing a domain portfolio, vending a domain offer, and/or establishing SEO. Privacy is also of use without penetration of the public, hackers, and potential vendors to your home or business.

Email, SEO vouchers, and optional open source applications can provide much more web hosting capability than most websites need, at a bargain price. Keeping an eye on the online forums for current coupons, offers and deals can leverage even more value from a discount web hosting plan. Getting the most attributes suitable to the website project is the best served goal.

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The inspiration for a great domain that hauls traffic can be traced to a specific shortfall of a certain existing website. As contrary to logic as it sounds, a domaining webmaster can bring information and news to a company’s public better than their own website. When a website tries to do to many things or be too many things, the opportunity is there for another domainer to take charge of traffic still looking for answers.

In discussing poorly made websites, I always bring up the Starbucks.com website as an example. This is a company that is operating a website on so many functional channels outside customer service it practically has migrated its motive. There is more information and imagery on a non-product event on its home page than access to the product for its customers. That’s a web design penalty box infraction from my point of view.

Today in  Starbucks it took me 19 minutes to log in and reload my Starbucks card. I was using the Starbucks wi-fi and the Starbucks website directly from their url. But the site kept struggling to load even the login page. While I can understand why a website might take longer to load or refresh once logged in for security reasons, the continued problem made no sense.

Then I took another look at how the site was designed. The front page was dominated by a huge high definition ready-to-run video of some Chicago Art installation. What did this have to do with the price of coffee in China? Nothing. The main pain point I normally have with the Starbucks site is that when Googling for information about a location, the clickthrough lands the user at the landing page of the Starbucks site.

This is the equivalent of a website saying “Huh?”. But if I already typed in the city name and the company name and got a Google result,and then clicked on the address with the mini map of the branch I want, I should have gotten the listing, not a pathetic plea from the Starbucks organization to provide them with their own location data to get the same location data back.

This means the website the SEO data guides the user to, with Starbucks location data that is not Starbucks, is the best SEO result. That is almost a contradiction in web terms, but one that makes domainers rich. And most Starbucks store hours aren’t posted online anyway, you have to physically drive to the location and look at the chalkboard or sign to find out.

I, a customer, trying to recharge my card, waiting to spend money for the company goods, had to wait until an overloaded graphic and default page took turns struggling to render. Point of sale management of any shopping cart application will tell you that holding up the sale, freezing the customer out of the website, and alienating customer goodwill towards the brand is a no-no.

This is one example of how a company like Starbucks has lost focus on serving customers to a degree that their website cannot work because of its causes bogging down its commerce. The flow to the point of sale is usually the best of any website, and rightfully so. To have to work that hard and wait that long to do things the “Starbucks way” is ridiculous and wastes the customer’s time.

Even more irritating is the option to contact Customer Service and inform and educate Starbucks about their own pitfalls.  Shouldn’t they know? I don’t work for Starbucks and I’m sure they pay a team of developers good money for the IT responsibilities involved. Why do I get to sojourn through the un-navigable Starbucks site to let them know how bad it is?

This is an opportunity for a neighborhood site or geo name portal to find traffic. If frustrated users of Starbucks sites and ones like it could depend on neighborhood blogs and Yelpalikes to guide their dining and shopping, the online world would be a better place. Travel domains and zip code and city name associated databases can fulfill search data for a domain name site  linking resident business listings for anxious web users.

If you don’t think you’ll find traffic, just go to Starbucks.com. And wait.

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When website technology makes the cover of TIME magazine, the webmasters who skip taking note and continue on their geeky ride to stardom suffer. Collaborative filtering is what Netflix and Blockbuster have been doing for years with our movie choices. TIME’s article assumes that consumers and listeners are such spineless jellyfish their taste in music is a non-static dynamic one Pandoresque taffy pull away from new consumerism online.

Webmasters have seen this kind of taste making before, usually linked to consumer side reviews or specification linked technology elements. How you buy a computer online or how you buy an Ebay object show massive marketing heave in complementary response to every click. Vacuum cleaners and diapers get the same treatment from sites like Target.com and Kmart. Online consumers have learned to accept this collaborative response as a constant.

The owners and programmers of Pandora.com have a gleeful exuberance and gosh-gee-whiz exuberance of a winning website at the top of its game. Opening Pandora.com’s box would seem to be fun, I haven’t had the time nor the inclination. But to change up the model of the appeal of a Pandora business plan is a challenge all webmasters can relate to.

The domain is the brand, the starting point of a functional online destination. Creating a “Pandora” for computers and suggesting netbook or Ipad choices could also be the next big collaborative software requiring a recommendation engine. It could also be a shopping list item for domainers cruising the dollar domain threads or the dropping and deleting auction site lists.

Forming domain names to eventuate as Pandora-like portals for other consumer items or objects thus becomes a valid domaining goal. The name Pandora itself does not pertain to music or technology but rather to classical mythology. That the broad arc between those dynamics has been bridged shows the stamp of an impressive marketing campaign. The user clickthrough and site visit frequency ramps up the SEO value of any such site.

But what about the rest of us who haven’t chosen wannabe music fans as our target market? Lots of web surfers don’t want to be informed about their taste and neither do they  want suggestions about what the webmasters think they are supposed to do or buy or click next.  Generally these type of pointing fingers take the form of affiliate ads. YouTube and Tivo aren’t as sales oriented in the recommendation engine tactics so the pain isn’t felt as much.

The key market for Pandora would seem to be people too dumb or impatient to discover music for themselves. I guess if it doesn’t slay you in the first ten bars, you won’ t be tempted to buy it or know it or learn it. Pandora has transformed music appreciation into a game of “Name That Tune”, where consumers can turn thumbs down on any ditty they don’t cotton to.

Pandora.com has an intrinsic value in that it slyly siphons content from the corpus of music created worldwide across history. That is a very large target base of Internet browsers to tap. And they didn’t pay for the development.  iTunes mined the same demographic, with its  lead samplings and suggested additional tracks and artists.

The core value of a recommendation engine is its database of users. Pandora taps the musical tastes of users who have ranged through its site answering questions, scanning titles, and selecting artists. This type of data works through the filtering model and products likely pathways of additional similar choices. But the associative (SEO) model still works too.

It is hard to argue about the success and popularity of Pandora, but it confounds the logical webmaster in me to do it. FaceBook was just such a site, and now an industry of privacy and security software companies are making bank doling out protective code to people who give crib notes on their lives to people (Friends) they haven’t spoken to in decades.

The domain market contains many expansive opportunities for those with ideas and commitment to their collaborative projects. The domain model like Pandora.com as a suggestive filter or recommendation engine has merit. The broad range of objects this might apply to could start another domain gold rush in recommendation engine domains. Toys, books, kites, model airplanes, surfboards, a portal for anything can be created with such a model to work from.

Now that the public and online Internet user base has developed a taste for having their choices filtered back to them in the form of additional product or item suggestions, any domainer can identify their target object and build a ‘Pandora” of their own. There are no limits, from game playing software to Barbie clothing. The Web (and TIME Magazine) has spoken. If you build it, they will come.

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