Choosing a Domain Name

It’s really important to choose your domain name wisely. It will represent your business image and it should convey the nature of your products or services to your potential customers. Here are some considerations you should take when choosing your domain name:

1. It is advantageous if the domain name is short, easy to spell and easy to remember; however, very short domain names are increasingly difficult to acquire as they are already registered by other businesses. If the choice is between a short domain name that is not easy remembered and a longer name that is easier to memorize and more meaningful it may be more beneficial to choose the longer name.
2. Most businesses opt for a name that is based on the name of their business or product. Choose a name that represents your company’s interests.
3. Avoid choosing a domain name that contains the trade mark of another business. It could mislead your visitors into thinking your business is not what it seems and could also end up in a lawsuit against you for trade mark infringement.
4. Domain names can contain numbers, letters, and dashes (-). Spaces and symbols are not allowed. It is not recommended to use too many dashes in a domain name because it can make the domain name too difficult to remember and doesn’t appear very professional. For example: www.my-great-product-and-online-shop.com
5. Consider any future plans for you business. If it is possible that you might expand into other areas, then try to choose a domain name that is not too specific. Your domain name doesn’t necessarily have to contain words related to your brand or trade. Take ebay and amazon for example.
6. Do not add unnecessary words like ‘the’, ‘ltd’ and ‘company’ to your domain name.
7. It helps if your domain name is easy to pronounce over the phone.
8. Choose the proper country specific domain extension for your market or country. For example .COM for the United States and International or .CO.UK specifically for the UK. You should also consider purchasing additional popular top level domains, such as .NET, and .ORG. This will prevent the possibility of someone else using these domain names for their business and the possibility of lost customers due to typing the wrong domain extension. For example if your business is a restaurant in the UK then you could purchase JoesPizza.co.uk to use as your main domain name, but you may want to also consider purchasing JoesPizza.com too and possibly JoesPizza.net and JoesPizza.org as well to eliminate any competition using the same name.
9. Now that you have brainstormed some great ideas for domain names, you will need to check if they are registered to someone else already. You can use the tool below to do this:
   

   co.ukme.ukorg.ukinfocommobinetorgeunamebizus

10. Once you have found an available domain name and you are ready to proceed you will need to register it through a domain registrar. A popular choice is 1&1 Instant Domain registration.