Choosing
a Domain Name
The
name of your website, or your Domain Name, on the internet acts
as the name and the address of your company's website all rolled
into one. Effectively, it is your identity on the Internet.
Therefore,
in the same way that you would spend time deciding on the name of
your business or a new product, it is essential that you also take
time when choosing your domain name to ensure that it is descriptive
enough to represent your business well and can easily be found by
your customers. To help you to select the best option, you will
find some background information below
and our 4 Hints and Tips on choosing
the best Domain Name for your business.
Background
A Domain
Name takes the form of www.yourname.com
(such as www.rosetta-alba.com)
and is made up of two main parts. Firstly, there is the “yourname”
part which can consist of the letters a to z, numbers 0 to 9 and/or
hyphens; secondly, there is the suffix or extension ie. the part
that starts DOT and then something. There are a number of possible
extensions available which reflect the type of organisation that
it is associated with. The most common are .com and for the UK .co.uk
.
There
are, however, a whole range of other forms which exist and indeed
the list seems to be ever growing. Some of the more common options
are:
General
- .com
- commercial business
-
.org - non profit organisation
-
.edu - educational institution
-
.gov - government agency
- .info
- general information site
- .net
- internet focused company
UK
specific
- .co.uk
- UK commercial company
-
.ltd.uk - UK limited company
- .org.uk
- non-commercial UK organisation
- .plc.uk
- UK Public Limited company
- .me.uk
- individual person
Nominet
is the registry for all .uk names and their website contains a great
deal of information on legal issues. However, for both .co.uk and
.com names, we can research possible options after discussions with
you and present a set of possible Domain Names best suited to your
organisation and your requirements. You can contact us via our call
back page for this.
4
Hints and Tips on choosing a Domain Name
1.
Do research
Make
sure that you spend some time to check the different options that
are on offer to you. Firstly, check the availability of your company
name and derivations of it - this will give you an idea of what
is available if you wish to reflect your company name in the Domain
Name. You should do the same with the 2 or 3 main key words and
phrases that are important to your organisation, and then any mixes
with your company name. You should also seek the opinion of some
key customers - the key words that they might pick to describe you
may be different to the ones that you would pick yourself.
2. Decide on the best suffix - aka dot what?
As we
have shown above, there are a number of options now available and
more coming onto the market!! As with many things, we believe that
you should keep it simple. If you are intending to do a lot of business
overseas then it it is advisable to go for a .com name if available;
if on the other hand, you are a primarily UK focussed business then
a .co.uk domain will put you in a strong position because it clarifies
your UK positioning. Ideally, you should cover both possibilities
by registering both suffixes and ensure that no other company can
use the brand value you are building up. There is no need to have
separate websites as both Domain Names can direct people to the
same website and the costs
of registering Domain Names are now very reasonable. Unless
you have good reason to do otherwise, we recommend that you leave
the other domain endings for a later date.
3.
Length is important
Although
the actual limit on the number of characters in a Domain Name is
63 for a .co.uk domain name, in practice it is advisable to keep
it much shorter. In practice, your principal goal is that you want
someone to be able to remember your Domain Name easily so that they
can find it, perhaps having been told it verbally. Therefore, although
the domain aod.co.uk may be short and easy to type in, anyolddomain.co.uk
would be easier to remember because we tend to remember meaningful
words rather than (what is to us) random letters. So try to strike
a balance between a meaningful set of words and having to type in
a very long Domain Name which might contain spelling errors.
4.
Make it meaningful ... and memorable
As
we have mentioned above, one option to make your Domain Name memorable
is to make it the same as the name of your organisation. This is
backed up by the fact that, when someone knows who you are, then
they will often look for your website simply by typing your company
name into the search URL and add a .com or .co.uk to it. If you
are going to include keywords as well or perhaps the name of one
of your main products or services, then try to ensure that this
is not so generic that it can be mistaken for those from other companies.
Perhaps the best way to test this is to check with clients and friends
to see it is easy to spell and remember.
If you
are uncertain about how best to choose or register a domain name,
then we can review your options with you and advise on which would
be most appropriate. We can also register
most top level domain names for you either as an independent
service or as part of creating a website for you.
Use
our call back form
with Domain Name in the subject box and we will get straight back
to you.
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©
Rosetta Alba Services Limited 2003 - 05