Published on May 24th, 2021 | by Bibhuranjan
04 Domain Name Tips for Businesses
Let’s say for a moment that you’re about to start a new business. You have what you think is an excellent idea, and you know there’s a spot in the market for your products or services. You can’t wait to blitz your niche and become a household name.
You know you need a company website, so you hire someone to design it for you. The finished product looks great, but you need to come up with a domain name before you can take it live.
Coming up with the ideal domain name is more critical than you might realize at first. The right domain name will ensure more business, while the wrong one can hamper all your efforts.
We’ve come up with a few domain name selection tips for the new or emerging company.
Your Domain Name Defines Your Brand
As a new business, you have plenty of things on which you’ll need to focus. You might have to look at protective DNS service vendors, for instance, or you may have to wow some potential investors. You still need to sit down and consider your domain name, because it can go a long way toward brand definition.
Calling your domain by your company name is the most obvious thing you can do. Someone else might have taken that name, though, or something very close to it. There are many derivative company names, so don’t let that discourage you.
At the same time, if most of the company name derivations are already domains, you need to come up with something that’s a bit different. You need to think about this as a potential branding opportunity.
You might want to sit down with your more creative team members and have a brainstorming session.
Try to come up with some keywords and phrases having to do with your niche, even if they don’t involve your company’s name in any way. You can then narrow down the list and pick the domain name that makes the most sense based on the products you’re selling or the services you’re going to provide.
Understand that This is Your First Chance to Make an Impression
Let’s say there is a potential customer shopping for a product within your niche. Your company is new, so this customer has never heard of you before. They Google a term that leads to your company’s website being one of the main hits that comes up at the top of the SERPs.
Your domain name doesn’t need to be your company if someone else already had the rights to it. However, a domain name should be something appropriate because if this new potential customer sees that your URL is something ridiculous, that’s going to be a major turnoff for them.
Remember that first impressions matter a great deal, and that certainly applies concerning domain names. If you try to make your domain name an inside joke or something that has nothing to do with your company and what you’re selling, you might repel a new customer before they ever visit your website.
You Can Use a Domain Name Generator if Necessary
Maybe you had the brainstorming session with your creative team members like we suggested. Other companies or individuals already had the rights to everything you came up with, though. What can you do next?
Like so many other things these days, a technological solution to your problem exists that should point you in the right direction. You can utilize a domain name generator tool to suggest some new options you haven’t come up with yet.
No one has claimed the ones this tool generates. If any of them appeal to you, you can immediately snap up the one you select, and that will solve the problem.
Stay Away from Numbers and Hyphens
Research indicates that people who visit websites for the first time don’t like hyphens or numbers within URLs. You can certainly speculate as to why that is, but it’s true more times than not.
If you stick to letters and words, that’s going to send the right message. If you start throwing in numbers and hyphens, it almost looks like you were floundering to come up with a domain name. You don’t ever want to send a new potential customer that message.
Once you come up with the right domain name, you should be able to move forward confidently. You can work on the website and polish it till it seems as welcoming as possible.