Choosing the right domain name for your online business

By Staff

You’ve probably spent considerable time creating your website and now it’s time to get it up and running. The first thing that you need to do is get a good domain name for it. You may think that this is an easy task, but that isn’t necessarily the case. The first thing that you need to do is to come up with a list of potential names for your website, preferable one that will also be the address of the website or its URL. For instance if you are selling shoes a perfect domain name would be shoes.com or affordableshoes.com. You get the idea, make sure the name is directly related to what your business is all about. If you are selling shoes you wouldn’t chose something like mybiz,com.

A domain name must stay in the mind of potential customers. If you choose one that is directly related to your business and are lucky enough to have it be the same as the URL, then it will be much easier for people to remember it the next time they are looking for shoes. They will also automatically know how to find your website.

Now that you have chosen a domain name, that’s only half the battle. The next step is the most important. You will need to find out if the domain name that you chose is available. Just because you choose a name doesn’t necessarily mean it is available. If it is available, great, it can also be used as the websites URL. But if it is not available, you may have to choose another domain name because you certainly wouldn’t want to have a domain name that is different than the site’s URL. Let’s take the shoe-selling example again. If your business is called shoes but the domain name is taken and you chose mybiz.com, your customers who are looking for shoes will wind up on your competitor’s site and you certainly don’t want that. You will lose more sales that way. People will not try to remember a URL that is not directly associated with the product that they are looking for.

So basically when you choose a domain name you absolutely have to make sure that it is available and can also be used as the sites URL. Otherwise, you may be in for a bad ride. So what if the name that you want is not available, what can you do now? Well, it depends how determined you are to get that particular name.

Let’s say that the name you chose is a brand name, but is not available. You can try to buy the name from the owner. In order to do this you will need to find out who owns the name. There is a site on the net that allows you to do just this. It is called “whois” and will give you all the owner information that you need. You can then contact the owner and explain your situation and see if you can buy the name.

However, be aware that the owner may have a high asking price for the domain name because he/she is aware that you are anxious to buy it. They know that you can buy domain names fairly cheap form other sites on the net, but this particular one which is unique to your business will cause them to drive the price up. Depending on how badly you want the name, it may cost you a hefty price.

If you are just starting out though and cannot afford to negotiate the purchase of a brand name domain, then you have no choice but to seek a much more affordable alternative. You also will need to get a domain name first before naming the website. For instance if you get mybiz.com, then your website will be known as mybiz and the URL will be www.mybiz.com. I know this is putting things in reverse order, but you have to secure the domain name first before you can possibly know what to call your business or website.

If you don’t make sure that you have a domain name first and make sure that it relates to what your website will be called, you will cause confusion for potential customers and may lose out on having a successful online business. The choice is yours!