What’s In A Name? Choosing Your Domain Name

What’s a domain name?   I get asked this question a lot by business owners asking me what they need to set-up their website.

The simple answer is that your domain name is your web address.

For instance, this website’s domain name/web address is www.createabusinesswebsite.co.uk.

Your domain name points to where your website is hosted and you can use a combination of alphanumerical characters and hyphens within a domain name.  You register your domain name through a domain name registrar for a certain period of time.

Choosing A Domain Name For Your Business

Your web address should be the same as your business name, though it maybe more difficult to get the domain name as the web has been around for some time, meaning there is more competition for names.  However, not all hope is lost and below are some tips on maximising the chances of getting the domain name you want.

Tips On Building Your Domain Name

Your Business Name

If you’re a small business there is a likelihood that there is another business out there with the same name as your business. That said, it is worth searching to see if your business name is already registered online.

Location Specific

You can merge the name of your business and your location such as www.[mycompany]london.com.  This is best suited to service or goods based businesses that only serve a particular geographical area such as hairdressers, plumbers or local florists.
Including the location of your business in your web address will also help potential customers find you when they are looking for services specific in your town or city through Google and other search engines.

Goods/Service Specific

You can also add your business name to the type of services you provide.  For instance if you run a hairdressers called A Cut Above, you can add ‘hairdressers’ to the address, if you run a clothes shop, you might add ‘clothing’.
Meaning your address will read like: www.acutabovehairdressing or www.groovy70sclothes.

Other Tips

• Try and keep your length of your domain name as short as possible – it makes it easier when you include it on your adverts, in your shop window and on your business cards.
• Don’t shorten to too much though and avoid abbreviations as they do not read very well online or by customers who do not know your business name and could by-pass you for the more obvious sounding web address of your competitors.
• Make sure that your domain name relates to your business.  Having a web address such as basketballshop is no good if you sell footballs.

Exercise

Grab yourself a pen and a piece of paper before you begin the process of registering your domain and take 5 minutes out.  Write yourself a list of possible domain names using the tips above.  Try and come up with about 10 variations.  Put a number 1 next to your most preferred web address through to 10 for your least preferred (though you would still be happy for your customers to associate your business with it).  This will help structure your domain name search.

Good luck!