As your company grows, you realise how important your domain name is in building and marketing your brand. This is why, it is vital to pick the right domain name before you start building your brand.
If you make the wrong choice at the start and later want to change your domain name, you will need professional assistance to make redirect your old website visitors to your new domain.
So here are 10 tips for selecting your new domain name:
- Extensions are important: If you are looking at targeting global customers then you want a .com extension, or at least a .net if you can’t purchase a .com. Of course, if you are targeting local customers, you want to stay with a local extension, such as .com.au.
- Keep it short: Long domain names tend to be forgotten easily, so always try and find a domain name that is as short as reasonable, whilst still reflecting your brand.
- Make it easily pronounceable: When you make your domain name easy for people to pronounce, it is also easy for them to talk about your website to their friends and to recommend your products or services.
- Avoid hyphens and numbers: These make your domain name difficult to remember, to jot down or type into a browser.
- Make it memorable: If you have a catchy, short domain name that is easy to pronounce, people can remember it much more easily than a longwinded hyphenated name. A memorable domain name is much easier to brand as well.
- Make it easy to spell: If you want people to quickly jot down your domain name to give to their friends, you need to make it easy to spell as well. So avoid domain names where words are misspelled as these confuse consumers and make it difficult for them to remember them.
- Does it reflect your product line? If you are just offering a single product or service, then your domain name can reflect this, for example if you sell cycles, then your domain could be -bestcycles.com.au. On the other hand if you offer a range of products or services, it might be better for your domain to be something like – sportsproducts.com.
- Will it be easy to promote? You want your domain name to be catchy, professional, short, easy to spell and to pronounce and if you have all of that right, then it should be easy to market your products online.
- Is it original enough? You don’t want a domain name that is very similar to a competitor’s URL or customers will become confused and you could lose a lot of traffic to a more authoritative website.
- Avoid copyright infringement: Just because a particular domain name is available, doesn’t mean that it is right for you to use it. Don’t make the mistake of building a brand around a copyrighted domain name and then be faced with having to change your domain name or suffer the legal ramifications.
Once you have selected your perfect domain name, you can set about building your new brand.
