In today's business world, a domain name and a web presence are a must. All major businesses have domain names. The Web is now a part of everyday commercial life and your domain name is your identity on the Internet. A business web site without a domain name is difficult to find and looks unprofessional.

The Web is where people and customers around the world find information about you, your products and your services - 24 hours a day. Here online buyers, suppliers and partners come together. Securing a domain name ensures that your company name or product names are on the Internet.

For the amount domain name registration companies charge, it's a small price to pay for increased credibility in the eyes of potential customers.

Several thousand new domain names a day are registered. However, with a little creative thinking, you can still find a strong domain name that reflects your business or specific interest. Of course, the longer you put off registering a name, the more limited your choices become.

Equal Access
On the Web, everyone has access to a first-rate location to set up a business. No matter how small you are, a good domain name can put your business on equal footing with multimillion-dollar sites such as Yahoo! and IBM. Therein lies the beauty of the Web: nobody knows if your site is run by a large team out of a downtown high-rise or by you from your garage.

If your site is a hobby or personal homepage, you can still benefit from a domain name. Your site will be easier to find, and more importantly, friends and relatives will remember it.

Domain names give you a higher profile on the Web
Domain names that include common keywords can improve a site's ranking in search results returned by major search engines. Many large search directories will not list a site that does not have its own domain name. As well, domain names are easy to remember and customers may not have to search at all to find you.

Easy to Locate
And let's face it, www.widgets.com is much easier to remember and locate than http://isp/users/widgets/index.html/.

Domain names are portable
Having a domain name means you can change web hosting services without losing customers. Your new web hosting service will point people to the same web site. This way, you can to change hosting services to find a better deal, or receive better service without losing viewers or breaking links. Without a domain name, your web site name (URL) changes each time you move, which is confusing to customers.

Shaun Cronrath is the President & CEO of DomainPurpose.com, a domain name registration company offering all the major domain extensions --.com, .net, .org, .info, .biz, .name, .ca, .us, .cn, .eu, .de, .pro and more.