Finding The Best Domain Name
5 Tips on Registering a Domain Name
1. The essentials: Be short, catchy and memorable! You should also make your name easy to pronounce and spell.
2. The unspoken rules: When buying a domain name, avoid something too similar to competing domain names and make sure not to violate someone else’s trademark.
3. ”.COM” – The ”.com” is the most popular top-level domain and it can be hard to find one that is available. In most cases, you should favor a ”.com” however if you are planning to sell in a specific country only you should consider a country specific domain such as “co.uk” for the United Kingdom.
4. Discoverable vs. Brandable: What’s your strategy? Solely relying on traffic from search engines? Then you should use real words and phrases like TopTvMounts.com that people are searching for to increase your search ranking. If your marketing focus is on paid search listing, banner ads and buzz building, you should come up with a brandable name like Insiders1.com that people will remember.
5. Be creative: Most single-word domains are taken and you might need to create your own word. Try compounding two whole words (YouTube), using a phrase (Six Apart), blending parts of two words together (Microsoft), tweaking a word (Flickr), affixing a word with a prefix or a suffix (Shopify), or making up a completely unique name (Odeo).
Tools to Help you Brainstorm Names
- Business Name Generator – Free tool from Shopify to generate business name ideas.
- GoSpaces – Free tool that helps you generate a business name. Quick and easy!
- NameStation – Generates a list of available domains based on a submitted word.
- Domaintyper – Checks domain name availability instantly.
- Domain Pigeon – See what others are looking to register as a source of inspiration.
- Domainr – Type a work and it will find “domain hacks”.
Most likely you will not get your first pick; don’t let that discourage you. You will find a great domain name to represent your store.
