Choosing a domain name

So… you’re looking for a name for your website. If you are a business, corporate entity or any other professional service, you should want a website name that would reveal your identity. On the other hand, if your website is something casual, you can go all out and pick a fun name.

Regardless of which category you belong to, you want to have a name that projects trust and your customers or audience can easily find. Here are a few things you can put on your checklist when naming your website.

1. Keep it short, easy to type, memorable and brandable.
2. Avoid hyphens, numbers, and doubled letters.
3. Include SEO keywords in your domain name, if possible.
4. Choose the right Top Level Domain.
5. Test it out
6. Research your desired domain name.

1. Keep it short, easy to type, memorable and brandable

Remember, whatever name you choose, your users will actually have to type it and even memorize it. Having an easy to remember name will prevent any of your users from getting lost when trying to navigate to your site. If someone asks you for your website and the only way they can remember it is if they write it down, you have a problem.

As a business owner you may be fortunate to already have a brand name. In this case, you’ll want to make it easy for people to connect your online and physical business. But regardless of this, you still want to :

• Keep it to a maximum of 15 characters
• Resist using slang - don’t use “U” instead of “you”
• Hold off words with complex spelling and meanings

For example, if you own a retail shop named ‘Angels phones and accessories’, having the domain name ‘angelsphonesandaccessories.com’ can really hurt your business. You would have to be creative and choose a name that while shorter, matches your business and brand. Maybe something like angeltech.com, heavenphones.com etc, the possibilities are endless.

2. Avoid hyphens, numbers, and doubled letters.

Don’t put yourself at a disadvantage if you can avoid it. Do everything you can to make it super easy for people to get to your site. Having hyphens, numbers and doubled letters simply creates barriers and hurdles for users when they are trying to access your website. People make mistakes and typo’s all the time and you should aim to minimize the chances of this happening.

Avoiding these elements in your domain name also makes it mobile friendly. On a mobile keyboard, you have to switch between alphabet and numeric keyboards and this can irritate your site’s visitors.

Of course, there are exceptions to very rule and if a number is a consistent part of your brand name it makes sense to keep it. e.g ‘99designs.com’, ‘123movies.com’ etc.

3. Include SEO keywords in your domain name, if possible.

Depending on what your website is about, having a keyword as part of the name can be a great boost. As long as it makes sense, having your product or service directly in your domain name creates great user experience and can help you rank higher in search results. For example, johnsclothing.com, tonyshoes.com, royalhotel.com, kikisfood.com, etc.

4. Choose the right Top Level Domain.

There are many domain extensions that serve different purposes so check out which extension will go well with your domain name according to your website’s purpose and content. But be careful when choosing because the general rule of thumb is ‘the more popular the extension, the more credible’.

For example, we chose to go with jaskin.tech because it aligned with our brand Jaskin Tech. Perhaps you may have an online shop and hence go with the .shop extension.

The .com extension is by far the most popular with a great number of websites using it, for this reason if you choose a domain name other than .com, it is a good idea to check what website exists at the .com version of your domain name. For example, you have a domain name of ‘www.happybaby.shop’, it’s a good idea to check up on what exists at ‘www.happybaby.com’. If ‘www.happybaby.com’ contains unflattering content, it might be best to steer clear and think up another name.

You should know that ‘www.joynews.com’ is considered totally different from ‘www.joynews.org’ or ‘www.joynews.net’. Each of these domains are different websites and not related to each other. They can all have different content and be used for differnet purposes by different people.

5. Test it out

Have a field test. Test your domain name with a number of people and see if they can easily pronounce it or spell it. Get outside opinion from your family, friends and other people to check if the name is as good as you think it is.

6. Research your desired domain name.

Congratulations, you’ve applied a good amount of brain juice and now you have a domain name that is to your liking. Now you should check if:

• Your name is available or already registered.
• Check if social media handles are available for your name.
• Do a google search to see if there are any other websites closely related to your brand.
• Especially for Saas applications, Check if there is no trademark issue with your domain name.

If you’ve checked and everything is great, move quickly to register your domain name before someone else gets the same idea as you. The internet is a big place. Nowadays domains are quite cheap to afford so if your venture is promising, it can’t hurt to register the name in advance as you are getting other things ready for your venture.

What if someone already has my domain name

You may find, after your research that the domain that your heart is set upon has already been taken. In this senario you can choose to -

Buy it from the owner

You can do a follow up on the current owner of the domain name and reach out to them with an offer to buy the domain name. You can take note of how good their site is doing, when it was last updated etc to determine if they might be willing to strike a deal.

For example, our domain name is ‘jaskin.tech’. But at the time of this blog (2024), the .com version of our site ‘jaskin.com’ is owned by someone - who is selling it at $1000. If we had wanted the .com version we would have to negotiate and buy it from the current holder.

Make a slight change to your name

You can also go back to the drawing board and see if you can come up with something new.

Choose a different extention

You can also choose a different TLD. Maybe the .com is already taken, you can opt for a .org version or mabye a .tech, .net etc.

How to register your domain name

The process to register your domain name is fairly simple, there are alot of domain registrars out there, you can read this blog on the process of registering a domain name.

Can you permanently buy a domain name

No. You can’t buy a domain name permanently. Domain names are registered on a regular basis, generally for one year or longer periods.

Whenever your registration is comming to an end, your registrar will alert you and you can decide to renew it or not. If you don’t renew it, another person can own the name.