When you’re promoting your business online, absolutely every decision you make matters. You’ll want to make sure you choose your domain name carefully; read on to learn how to choose a domain name for your business.
5 Tips on How to Choose a Domain Name
The domain name is one of the more important choices you will make, as the domain name you choose will determine visitors’ initial impression of your business and help people to find it quickly and easily.
1. Think About Type-ability
First things first, choose a domain name that is easy to type. If your domain name features letters all across the keyboard spectrum, there’s a big chance of a typo. Some websites specialize in taking advantage of common typing errors by grabbing up mistyped but similar domain names and promoting their own similar products or services.
In addition to thinking about potential typo problems, you will also want to avoid repeated words in close proximity to one another or repeated letters, especially when it comes to an “a” or “an” coming right after a word that ends with “a.” These types of domain names can make it difficult for people to find your site.
2. Make it Memorable
You should choose a memorable domain name that is catchy and helps to market what your business sales. Something like “WeOfferCheapSinks” is a much better choice for a sink company domain name than “SinksinBostonatAffordableandGreatlyReducedRates,” for example. A good rule of thumb is to imagine your domain name being blared in a commercial or plastered on a billboard. If it doesn’t sound good and it doesn’t easily and succinctly capture your business’s purpose and brand, you might want to rethink it.
What you do is sometimes a better choice for a domain name than your actual company name. I would recommend your purchase your company domain name and perhaps one that is more branded like “WeOfferCheapSinks”.
3. Be Original
Your domain name must be original. Being original can certainly be challenging in today’s world because it can seem like every possible domain name has been snatched up.
Put your thinking cap on and don’t take it off until you come up with something totally unique. If you sell hats, for example, and you find that your chosen domain name of “HipHats” is taken, don’t simply purchase “HipHat”. You will be sending people who mistype or mistake your domain name to another company and making your business seem interchangeable with others, which is the last thing you want to do.
When your domain name is unique, it sends the message that your business is unique as well.
4. Make it Short and Sweet
People are lazy. That’s sad but true, and you need to consider this when you choose your domain name. Nobody wants to type in a super long domain name, and a longer name is hard to remember. Plus, the longer the domain name, the higher the chance for a typographical error.
Keeping your domain name short, sweet, simple and to the point will save you and your potential customers a lot of hassle.
5. Say No to Punctuation
Finally, avoid putting hyphens in your domain name. I realize it seems like an easy fix when your domain is purchased by someone else to consider adding hyphens like in this example, “We-Offer-Cheap-Sinks”, but you will most likely regret it down the line and hyphens are easily forgotten, mistyped or misplaced when someone is entering your domain name.
If you are reading this article because you are thinking about changing your domain name, you will definitely want to read this one too.
How did you choose your domain name? Anything you will do differently next time? Comment below.
