Don’t Lose your Website
Website: Your Most Important Business Asset
In 2019 your website is arguably your most important business asset. It’s your home on the internet. Your website gives your business credibility, visibility, lets people know how to contact you and more. For online entrepreneurs it’s their primary source of revenue.
Recently I was checking out a business from their Facebook page. Wanting to know more I clicked the About section, looked for the link to their website and clicked through. Instead of finding their website, I saw message from a domain registrar “This domain name expired click here to renew it or it will be deleted”.
Most people will check out your website before contacting you about doing business. It’s part of a normal background check. If there’s something wrong with your website, they’ll just go to a competitor. They won’t tell you there’s something wrong.
And it’s not just potential clients. An investment advisor, I know, says he has seen investors be turned down for consultancy because their business doesn’t have a website. Financial institutions don’t consider you to be a serious business person if you don’t have a website.
You Forgot to Renew Your Domain
You could forget to renew your domain name and not receive the notification from the registrar.
I recommend adding the renewal date for each of your domain names to your Google calendar with a reminder several weeks in advance.
With your domain registration, many registrars will allow you to set up automatic renewal.
If you have more than one website or one domain for your business make sure they’re all registered with the same registration service. You can renew domains for multiple years. If you do, ensure you record when the expiry date is.
If you realize you’ve let a domain lapse, contact the registrar immediately. Reputable companies will have a grace period where they don’t allow anyone else to purchase that domain to give you time to renew. But be aware that there are people who look for domains that are expiring and purchase them in the hopes you’ll be willing to buy it back at an inflated price.
Your Hosting Expires
Another thing that can happen is you’re hosting expires. If you forget to renew your hosting you may still own your domain but if you’re hosting company deletes your data you will still have no website. Additionally, if you do not have an up-to-date backup of your website you may have to recreate it from scratch.
Make sure your hosting notification goes to your main email address.
I recently was contacted by a former client who had had this happen to them. Their website had likely been down for several months before they noticed it. They were hoping I had backups of their website.
Just like with your domain registration, you want to make sure the notification from your hosting company goes to an email address you check regularly.
It’s also a good idea to make it a practice to check in on your regularly. Just visit them from time to time so you know they are still alive.
Many hosting companies will back up your website but it’s a good idea to keep an up-to-date backup offline as well.
Audit Your Websites
I suggest you do a quick audit of your websites today. Know where they’re registered, where they’re hosted, when each of these payments renews, ensure you’re contact information is current. Set up reminders for renewal dates.
While you’re at it, do an audit of your social media assets. Make sure you have current email addresses listed for your accounts and include a secondary email address if it’s allowed. Add your cell phone to accounts for account retrieval. Update passwords if needed.
Wrapping it up
The worst thing you can do as a business owner is allowing your domain to expire. Considering that domain renewals are extremely cheap, there is no reason why all your hard work and money should go down the drain.
Always ensure that your domain renewals are done before the expiration date. You can even choose to buy more years, so you don’t have to keep renewing every year.
Axial Worldwide Corporation specializes in several areas of online presence, including website design, social media management, and content creation. If your business needs assistance in these areas, contact us. We’d love to work with you.