Choosing a domain name is the single most important decision you will make when building a website. Your domain name is your branding, it’s your identity on the Internet. It’s how people will find your site. The key is finding the right domain name that people will remember, but will also suit your needs as a business owner. This article will show you some of the traps you should avoid when choosing a your domain name and provide helpful information and advice on exactly which of current types; .com, .co.uk, .net etc. you should choose and why. Read on.
What’s in a name?
Three and a half years ago when I was first setting up my company I was faced with the difficult task of not only creating a company from scratch, but also creating my branding, design and choosing a domain name for the website. As you can appreciate, there are a quite a few web design companies in the UK. It seemed that every time I had an idea for a great domain name and design I would look up the registration details and would find that another company or individual had already purchased that name. It took me a while. I was thinking along the lines of I.T and the web for my company, because after all, that’s would I would be doing. After about a week of getting nowhere I started to approach the problem from a different angle. I thought about Amazon. Here was a company that had nothing to do with the Amazon, but had chosen that domain name for their online business. This got my wheels turning. I didn’t have to choose a technical sounding name. I just needed to find something that was available and that would be easy to remember for people. If it worked for Amazon, it could work for me right?
With this thought in mind I remembered that a couple of months before I’d been asked to produce a new company logo for another web design company. Of the designs I’d submitted they narrowed their choice down to the final two. One of the designs featured a blue square and the other featured a yellow circle. In the end they decided to go with the blue square design as it used less colours and would therefore be cheaper for them to get printed. OK, I thought to myself, they didn’t go with yellow circle, so maybe I should. After a quick who-is search I found that the domain name; www.yellowcircle.co.uk was available. I registered it immediately. This was the perfect domain name for me. It had significance to me, so that whenever anyone asked “Why yellow circle?” I had an interesting answer and secondly it’s very easy to remember. It’s a colour and a shape. Far easier than something technical sounding. It also helped me to stand out and be different from my competition. Perfect.
Things to remember when choosing your domain name
Below I’ve listed some pointers for you to help you choose the right domain name for your site.
- Keep it simple
- Don’t choose words that people may misspell
- If you’re only trading in one country you should obtain the domain name type for that country e.g. in the United Kingdom you would choose .co.uk
- If you’re trading internationally then a .com domain name is the type to go for
- If you’re a charity you should choose a .org domain name type
- .com domain names are (usually) registered for a 1 year period. Registration renewal is required every 12 months
- .co.uk domain names are registered for a 2 year period and require bi-annual renewal
- A .com domain name usually costs a little more than .co.uk or .org domain name
- You can transfer your domain name to any web hosting company, you don’t have to host your site with the company you purchased the domain name from
- You can register more than one domain name for a website. Each domain name can be set up to point to the same website
Sites you can use to check if a domain name is available
You can use the sites listed below to check domain name availability.
- http://www.checkdomain.com (good for .co.uk domains)
- http://www.whois-search.com (good for .com domains)
You may find that a domain name you’re seeking has already been registered. However, it may be possible for you to be able to purchase the domain name from the current owner. Often contact details of the domain name owner are displayed on the websites mentioned above. If you feel that you need the domain name someone else already has you can get in touch with the current owner and ask if they’re prepared to sell it to you. Obviously this costs money, but sometimes it may be worth it.
Final Thoughts
I’m hoping you find the above information useful and will consider it when you need to purchase your next website domain name. I’m happy to provide help to anyone (whether they’re a client of mine or not) on this or any other matter relating to web hosting, web design and SEO services.
Written by Ian Hazeldine, Managing Director of Yellow Circle Web Solutions Limited, a web design and hosting company based in Staffordshire, UK