Ever wonder how potential customers find your store online? They search for it using brand or domain names, such as ecwid.com.
A unique domain name sets you apart from countless other websites. Without one, prospective customers won’t find you online, leading them to visit your competitors’ pages instead.
Luckily, with Ecwid by Lightspeed, you can easily purchase, set up, and manage a secure domain name right from your Ecwid admin.
In this article, we will explain why having a domain is essential for ecommerce businesses and how Ecwid by Lightspeed makes registering the perfect domain name for your business easy.
What Is a Domain Name?
Simply put, a domain name is the unique address of your website. It is what people type into their browser’s search bar to view a particular website. For example, if you want to visit Ecwid’s website, you will type “ecwid.com” into the search bar and press enter. The same goes for any website — a domain name helps access any site online.
The basic form of a domain name consists of two elements:
The domain name itself, for example, “ecwid” The extension, such as “.com”
A domain extension is a suffix that follows the domain name in a web address. The most common domain extensions are .com, .net, .org, .co.
ecwid.com is the domain name for the Ecwid by Lightspeed website
Various domain levels exist, and this hierarchical structure in the domain name registry helps distinguish one domain from another.
The most common domain levels are the following:
Top-level domains represent the highest level in the Domain Name System. They can be generic (.com, .net, .edu, .gov) or country-specific (.uk, .au, .fr, .jp.) Second-level domains follow top-level domains. Usually, it’s a brand or company name, for example, amazon as in amazon.com Third-level domains (also called subdomains) follow second-level domains. The most popular third-level domain is “www.”
Learn more about a domain name structure in our article:
Why Is It Important to Have a Domain Name?
With so much competition out there today, having an easily recognizable domain name can make or break an ecommerce store’s success. Here’s why you need a domain name:
Accessing Your Store Online
A domain name is essential for any ecommerce business because it gives your business a unique identity and gives customers an easy way to find and access your store online. While it is okay not to have a domain when first starting out, as soon as you start growing, there’s no doubt that you will need one to build trust with customers and ensure they can reach you online without any issues.
Brand Recognition
A domain name is also important for branding and standing out from the competition. A unique domain name helps associate your name with your product, services, and brand.
Having a domain that reflects your business name can let shoppers know who you are and what you sell. That, as a result, helps customers remember you more, further supporting your brand.
CakeSafe strengthens its brand by using a domain that reflects its business name
SEO Benefits
Leveraging keywords is essential for a successful search engine optimization strategy. Using a domain name that includes a keyword related to your business can be beneficial in boosting search rankings.
Now that you know why a domain name is important for your business, it’s time to buy it. Typically, you acquire and register a domain through a domain registrar, a business specializing in selling domain names and managing the registration process.
Buying a domain can be costly, as registrars often charge high prices for popular names, use hidden fees, or enforce large price jumps after one year. Not to mention that you’ll need to connect a domain manually to your online store. Setting up your domain manually requires some technical understanding and could lead to issues if done improperly.
Fortunately, you can streamline your domain management, saving both money and effort, by acquiring your desired domain directly from Ecwid by Lightspeed.
A Perfect Domain Solution for an Online Store
Ecwid by Lightspeed offers you the ideal domain solution — a domain name for your online store at a competitive price and without any hassles.
If you’ve been selling with Ecwid by Lightspeed for some time already (if not, get your free online store now), it’s likely you’re aware that when you sign up with Ecwid, you get a free ecommerce website with a built-in online store, aka Instant Site.
You also get a free customizable domain for your Instant Site that looks like this — name.company.site, where “name” is the name of your store and “.company.site” is the Ecwid domain.
An example of an Ecwid Instant Site with a free domain name
However, you should get a custom domain name for your store, for example, one with a .com extension.
The great news is that you can actually do everything domain-related right from your Ecwid admin! Search, buy, and set up — all in just a few clicks. It doesn’t require any tech skills and is as simple as sending an email.
When buying a domain through your Ecwid admin, you’ll get a secure domain with a free SSL certificate and WHOIS privacy protection in minutes.
An SSL certificate is a must for any online store, as it ensures the data exchange between your store and customers is safe, protecting sensitive data from hackers and data thieves.
Not all domain registrars provide you with an SSL certificate for a domain, so you’ll have to enable it yourself. However, with Ecwid by Lightspeed, you purchase a domain with an automatically enabled SSL certificate.
Ecwid store owners can be sure that their data and their customers’ data is safe
As for WHOIS privacy protection, it will help hide your domain information from public view. WHOIS is a public database that contains the information collected when someone registers a domain name. Spammers often crawl those records for email addresses.
When you purchase a domain through Ecwid by Lightspeed, it comes with WHOIS privacy protection. It removes your personal contact information from the WHOIS record so that your personal data is unavailable to scammers, spammers, or other third parties.
Benefits of Buying a Domain Name Through Ecwid
The domain tool in your Ecwid admin helps you register and connect a domain name with maximum convenience.
Save Both Time and Effort
Usually, to buy a domain, you need to search a number of registrars for your desired domain name, check if the chosen registrar is secure (don’t forget an SSL certificate), and then set up the domain yourself and connect it to your online store. That requires significant time and work, particularly for a beginner company owner.
With Ecwid by Lightspeed, searching, buying, and setting up your domain happens in your Ecwid admin, eliminating the need to use third-party providers and log into other systems.
After you purchase a domain through Ecwid by Lightspeed, it will automatically be set up for your online store, so you don’t have to do it yourself. Perfect for busy and not-so-techie business owners!
Should you have any questions about your domain, you can easily reach out to our Customer Care team from your Ecwid admin. More aspects of your online store can be directed to the support you know and love.
Save Money
A domain price is also to be considered. Prices can differ greatly, with popular domain names being very expensive. Registrars realize that domain names are an important part of a business, and they put a higher price on names that are easy to type and contain a .com extension and a product or industry name. For example, flowers.com will likely cost way more than a flowersfrombob.site.
When purchasing a domain through Ecwid, you benefit from discounted prices, making your perfect and easily discoverable domain name more cost-effective. This eliminates the need to compromise on spelling or consider alternative names that might be cheaper but could be harder for customers to recall and type—something you undoubtedly want to avoid.
Not to mention that you have to renew your domain (usually once a year), and some registrars don’t miss the chance to raise a domain price when the period renews. With Ecwid by Lightspeed, there are no hidden fees or high price jumps when renewal comes around.
Strengthen Your Brand
We’ve already discussed that brand recognition is one of the main reasons for getting a domain name for your online store. With Ecwid by Lightspeed, you can easily strengthen your brand and get the ideal domain name before someone else claims it.
If you have an offline store, it makes even more sense to get your business a domain name that matches your brand name and offline location. You already have a customer base, so it’s essential they can find your store online using the name they’re already familiar with.
The easier it is for customers to find your store online, the more sales you will land. You can ensure that by buying a domain that matches your brand.
Improve Your SEO
You want your online store to be easily discoverable, and one of the ways to do that is to optimize your website for search engines.
A domain name is one of the signals that search engines use when determining where to rank your website. If you use a generic domain that you share with other businesses (for example, .company.site domain), improving your business’s visibility in search engines might be more complicated.
When purchasing a domain through Ecwid by Lightspeed, you get to use your unique domain, giving your business a domain-level SEO boost.
SEO is vital for growing your online store in the long term, so ensure that you improve your online store ranking by setting up your custom domain.
How to Buy a Domain Name in Ecwid by Lightspeed
Whether you are a beginner store owner or run an established business, buying a domain name is super easy with Ecwid by Lightspeed. The magic happens on the Website → Domain page, and the whole process takes no more than a couple of minutes.
Follow these instructions from the Help Center to buy your perfect domain in your Ecwid admin.
Buying a domain through Ecwid by Lightspeed is available to all Ecwid sellers on paid plans. You can choose from different top-level domains (including the most popular .com) except for country-specific domains.
Prices for domains differ, but rest assured that there are no hidden fees, terms, or renewal price jumps.
Buy Your Dream Domain Today
Having a unique domain name is a must if you want your ecommerce business to succeed online today. With so much competition, potential customers need an easy way to locate your online business and safely buy from your store. That’s why Ecwid by Lightspeed offers entrepreneurs an incredibly simple way of purchasing a secure domain directly from the Ecwid admin—so that your business isn’t forgotten amongst all the noise.
No need to switch between different systems. With Ecwid by Lightspeed, you can effortlessly manage everything related to your online store, be it a website, a domain, or your storefront, right from your admin.
So, what are you waiting for? Strengthen your brand and claim your ideal domain today.
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The post The Easiest Way to Buy a Domain for an Online Store first appeared on Ecwid | E-Commerce Shopping Cart.