Tips For Choosing A Domain Name
Just as it is with a business logo and name, choosing the best domain name is an important step towards launching a successful digital marketing campaign. A good domain name has to be short, clever, memorable, easily spelled and communicate your business message to your target audience. Hence, the domain name is an important element to think through before commencing the web design process. Unlike offline businesses, choosing the best domain name can be tricky and could lead to an embarrassment or unintentional inappropriate domain name. Here are some tips to consider when choosing the right domain name for your site:
Own The .com Domain
Always try to get a domain name that is available for .com TLD extension. It is important as most people will assume that your official website ends with .com and you might be losing a lot of traffic if you do not own the .com domain. If you really insist on getting that domain name even if the .com extension is taken, the next best one way be using the country code TLD for your domain name. For example, in Singapore, your country code TLD will be .com.sg or .sg.
Make It Short And Simple
If your domain name is too long or uses un-memorable words or sounds, you have lost a part of your marketing value as there are people who will misspell your domain name and not able to find your website. Also, try not to use any dashes or underscores on your domain names to avoid confusion. The goal is to make your domain name as short as possible thus making it very easy for anyone to remember your domain name at the top of their fingertips. It will be bad if someone wants to refer your website but just couldn’t remember the domain name. If your company name is really long and you would still like to be on your domain name, then consider picking the initials or the first name and register that instead of using the full name.
Self-Explanatory Domain Name
If you are not intending to use your company or business name as your domain name, you can choose a name that can allow others to easily make an accurate guess at the type of content that might be found on your website. In this way, your customers can easily relate your business with this domain name. For example, hotmail.com and gmail.com both contain the word “mail”. Hence, you might guess it is a web-based email service. Always think about your target audience and products/services and come up with a name that easily strikes with them.
Use Some Creativity
Your business name should be appealing to your customers while at the same time portraying the right company image. It will be good to brainstorm for at least a few phrases that describe the purpose of your website. Then you can experiment by adding prefixes or suffixes to create more ideas for your domain name. For example, if you are selling honey on your domain, you might want to start with words like “honey”, “hive”, “bees”, “beekeepers”, etc. and then play around till you find a good match.
Be Unique
It is bad if your domain name is very similar to a popular site as it just misled your visitors. You have to make sure that your domain name is really unique and not just missing a letter or having an additional letter from a famous brand like Flicker.com (Flickr.com), Facebok.com (Facebook.com) or PuzzleHve.com (PuzzleHive.com). If this domain name is your company name, you might want to reconsider changing your company name so as not to affect your branding. For example, you are advertising for your website PuzzleHve.com and everyone thinks the advertisements are meant for the famous PuzzleHive.com instead, imagine how many potential customers are you losing!
Use Domain Selection Tool
Last but not least, you can use website like Domainr to look for available domain names. You do not need to register your domain with them, just use those websites to search for your domain name and then go to the registrar of your choice to register it.
Always remember to consider your domain name when you are choosing your company name as it is your identity on the web; you want to make sure you choose a name that not only fits your business, but is also easy to find and promote.