Before you hire a professional web design and web development company to create a site for your business, you will need to choose and purchase a website domain. This may sound like a pretty easy task, but it is not always a simple as sticking a “.com” at the end of your business name.
For one thing, you may discover that your first name choice isn’t available. Even if it is, this isn’t always the best choice anyway. Let’s say your business is called One Stop Plumbing, before you click the buy button, ask yourself the following questions:
Is my domain name easy to remember?
Onestopplumbing.com might be easy to remember, but if it isn’t available you’ll have to start modifying it; this is where the trouble begins. You could be tempted to start adding other characters (like underscores), or alter the spelling. Both of these methods will reduce the memorability. There is another option, which brings us to our next question…
Does my domain name reflect the purpose of the site and of my business?
Well, our example does have the word “plumbing” in the name, so technically it does. When it comes to motivating users to visit your site however, it never hurts to consider making your name more descriptive. Just because the name of your business is “One Stop Plumbing,” doesn’t mean that this also has to be the name of your site. Experiment with word combinations — maybe “yourplumbingexperts” or “plumbingsolution” is available in a .com, .net, or other extension. By doing this, you’ll also eliminate the need to alter your domain name by adding hyphens, underscores, numbers or changing the spelling (all of which will make your domain name too hard to remember).
Is my domain name difficult to spell?
In this case, it would seem obvious, but the number “one” can also be typed numerically “1″. If you use numbers in your domain name, you’ll always have to to clarify whether it is spelled out or if it is just the number. If we take a closer look at onestopplumbing.com the double P could cause confusion. Typing in onestoplumbing.com won’t get you to the same place, unless you think to do a site redirect. And even with a site redirect it will probably still create confusion.
These are just some of the important questions that you should ask yourself before choosing a website domain name. Taking the time to do your research and consider all of your naming options thoroughly will go a long way towards helping you (and your customers) avoid confusion and frustration in the future.
About the author: Jeune Ortiz is VP of Marketing and Creative Director at future-ink. With more than 20 years of experience in graphic design and marketing, Jeune brings extensive knowledge and creativity to each website and internet marketing solution to grow your business.
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1 Comment
Cordia Harris | January 6, 2010
So glad I read this, because I will be finishing my next book in about 8 weeks and I must soon get started on a new website for this next text. Many questions have been answered already through your Website Domain information thank you so much future-ink, I so appreciate your help.