Should Your Email Address Have a Domain Name?

Hi! This is the Daily Overpass! My name is
Eric and I make apps! Now today, I want to ask “Is it important to have your own
domain on your email address?” Alright, so, we have a few clients that they produce
like tools and devices and things like that, and we write the apps that
communicate with those devices. There’s a lot of like businesses that we work with
in this way and one of them has a device that’s not yet finished yet. So, it hasn’t
been created, but they they know which Bluetooth chip set they’re going to use.
And we, they want us to start on the development side of the app, you know,
before they’re finished with the device, which means that we have to use the same
chip set, which is- which is fine. We’ve done this before, so you know,
they gave us a few- they gave us all the specifications and a few
different suppliers, I had the chip set, although most of them didn’t have it in
stock. But one of them was still, you know, they still had it. It was like it’s-
it’s a Bluetooth Low Energy thing, right? And it’s really cool that actually.
Basically what happens is you plug it into USB and you plug the chipset
into a board, which is- which comes with the board and then you can send
commands through the Bluetooth and you can see it like on a terminal on your PC.
Anyway, that’s not important but cool. if you get the chance to work on that kind
of stuff. Alright, so anyway, I called up the company, I go to the company’s website
rather and I find the development kit that I need to use. I go and I
added it to my basket. I go through checkout and like on the third step,
there’s an error. Not an error due to anything I’ve done. It was just sort of
like a- like a website error. Like they’re maybe- they’re running out dissipate, I
have no idea what it was. It didn’t make any sense to me. But you know, these kind
of things happen and so, that was fine. You know, it wasn’t a
small company according to their team page and like ten-fifteen people at least. You never know really, but it wasn’t like a
one-person company. So anyway, I could try back a few hours later, think it may
be- they resolved it and they had it, so I thought, well, I’ll just call
their support line, so I go find the contacts, call the support line
and the phone rings a few times and the person answers and says, “Hello?” and
I say, “Uh, yeah, is this, uh, XYZ company?” I don’t remember
they were called and she said, “Yeah, how can I help you?” and I say, okay, the website
and I explained it to her. She says they’ll look into it on all this kind of
stuff and then we hang up. Now, the whole- this whole- yeah, there are a few
things that went wrong there. So, they had problems with their website,
they weren’t able to help me on support, all that kind of stuff. The
thing that bothered me the most about it and I don’t know why this did, was that
she answered the phone by saying “hello?” and not the name of the company. It
was just- it was just one of these little things that threw me off and
threw off the whole thing like it was just, you know, I didn’t know
post-phoning the right place And afterwards, they thought about
and I thought, well how she answered the phone was not important. It didn’t have
no bearing on anything. It would- you know, it didn’t- she could be
really helpful, you know, the website didn’t work, all this stuff.
That had no bearing on anything, but still it bothered me. To me, it
lacked a sense of professionalism, like it wouldn’t have costed anything else to
answer the phone like professionally. Now again, if this was like a one-person
company or something like that and they’re working in a home, then I could
understand that. But this was like a company. Like I called offices and they
said hello, it bothered me. Now, this is the same kind of thing that bothers me
when I get contacted by companies and their email address is like Gmail or
hotmail or yahoo mail. It’s just one of these little things that’s
always kind of bothered me. Now, if somebody emails me like they’re
like a developer or they’re an individual and they have
gmail.com, that I’m okay with. But a lot of times, I get contacted by
companies or so-called companies whatever, they might have a website, they
might have, you know, all this kind of stuff, but they have the gmail address
And I just- it’s one of these little things that- it’s not
expensive to get a domain and it’s not expensive to hook up a domain with a
gmail, with a gmail. We use Google Apps for business.
You can also set up other different domains, all this kind of stuff.
But it’s one of those little things that’s not expensive to do, but
it’s just a little bit more professional. I started thinking about like all
the other ways to do this kind of stuff, like it again- they could be-
it doesn’t have any bearings on their- how well they do their job, on
the type of service they can give, all these kinds of stuff. It’s just one of
those little things that just doesn’t quite sit with me. It puts doubts
into my mind early on. It’s a little bit the same as if you go
to a job interview. Like if you go to a job interview and you’re not dressed
appropriately, you might not get the job. Now, you know how your dress has nothing
to do with the job you do. It’s just the impression that you make to show that
you’re trying a little bit. And I was trying to think, why this was
bothering? Why did this bother me? I try to put it into words. Like
let’s say you’re gonna call an electrician. Let’s say you’ve got electrical problems in your house and you make three
calls for electricians. The first guy shows up, he’s just in his car, you know,
he’s got- he goes into the trunk, he was just wearing normal clothes-
t-shirt and jeans, he goes into his truck- into his trunk, he pulls out a
few tools, he walks to the door, he knocks on the door. When you answer, he says, “I
hear you got a problem with the electricity?” That’s fine. The second
guy comes up. He pulls up in his van, the man has the name of his company
on it , he may or may not be wearing- he’s wearing a
shirt, but he may not be branded shirt, whatever, that’s not really important. I
don’t think, but then he takes his tools, and then he answers the
phone, he says, “Yo,.Hi, I’m Joe from Joe’s electricians. You
gave me a call. How can I help you?” all that kind of stuff. And then the third guy
shows up and he’s in a really nice car and he comes up in a three-piece suit.
He doesn’t have any tools and he just says, “I
understand you have trouble with your electricity.” Now, of those three people
which one would you choose? The guy who made no effort, the guy who made some
effort or the guy who made too much effort? Yeah? For me, I was try to think
which one would I- which one would I want to go with and it would be
the second one. It’d be the one who had a sense of professionalism about him, but
wasn’t trying too hard, like the third guy wouldn’t want to be an
electrician or I think there’s no way I can afford this guy or whatever.
What does he like? Is he electrician to the Stars or whatever. But you know, the
first guy who made no effort which is the case a lot of times, it has
no- it has no bearing on on how will they do their job. The
the first guy could be the best electrician or the last guy
could be the best electrician, but it’s the second one who made the effort to
those little things that just sort of, you know, they just put
me at ease that I was spending my money wisely. So, this is my question to you,
because I know I’ve talked to a lot of people about this in the past,
where they say, you don’t really need a website, you don’t need a domain
name, you don’t need business cards. You know this, none of that stuff is
important. It’s just knowing the right people and meeting the right
people and I know other people who spend way too much time on that kind of stuff.
Like they spend all their time setting up the website, doing the business cards,
not enough time finding clients and I think, it’s sort of a happy medium
in between. So, I want to ask you, guys, today- for this weekend, do you think
it’s important to have a domain name? Do you think it’s important to have a
website? If you’re gonna work with clients or if you’re gonna even
do app support, all that kind of stuff, even just as a company? A lot of you, guys,
are setting up your own companies or you have your own companies. Do you feel that
kind of stuff is important or do you think it’s all over-hyped? So,
anyway, those are just my thoughts for this- for
today. I hope you, guys, have a great weekend and I’ll talk to you guys on
Monday!