12 Nov What is in a domain name?
It is impossible to overstate how much the right domain name matters. With more and more businesses starting and operating mostly or completely online, a domain name is a huge part of a company’s success.
Branding and recognition
A domain name is the main way for your company to communicate its purpose. Customers see your domain name before they see your website, whether this is on business cards, promotional material, vehicles, or online search results. Your domain name should immediately communicate what your business does and perhaps where it is located. This matters for two reasons: you want relevant customers to choose your website over a competitor and you don’t want to waste your marketing budget paying for clicks from an irrelevant customer because your name gives the wrong impression.
This doesn’t mean that a domain name has to be completely functional and have no character. As the front window to your business, a good domain name should ideally communicate the organisation’s character; for example, sugarartcakes.com has a very different feel to cakesbyannie.com. You have probably already thought through the values your company name communicates when you chose it, so this mostly gets tricky when the perfect domain name is already taken and you have to improvise.
Your TLD (top-level domain – the domain name ending, such as .com or .org) can help with tailoring your website. You can build in elements such as .shop or .local to customise your domain name, which in turn can help your SEO.
How to buy a domain name
It is easy to buy domain name from specialists such as https://www.names.co.uk/domain-names. What’s more, you can usually search available domain names and try out a few different possibilities with different TLDs before you commit to a domain name.
This also offers you the opportunity to make sure your domain name stays distinctive by grabbing the same site name with a couple of different top-level domains. This means you are less likely to lose customers to a competitor with an almost identical name or put your customers at risk of online scams whereby they are tempted to enter their details on a site they think is yours.
While there is a lot to think about when choosing a domain name, the main thing to remember is that it should be a fun and creative experience!