Choosing Domain Names
By Vickie Florschuetz
Select the right domain name. As a business owner, choosing a business name takes careful thought and can make a difference in sales. For instance, an esteemed chef may want to use her name in the title of her restaurant or an entrepreneur who specializes in flavored pasta may want to use a name with an Italian flair. Although there is much flexibility, usually a business name has some reflection on the type of business based on reputation or to provide a certain image in the customer’s mind. It helps sales when it makes sense. A domain name should be approached with a similar plan.
One name, one Internet. When choosing a name to register for your website, differences will apply. Unlike registering a business name with the state you service, a domain name can only be registered once for the entire Internet. That means there could be an Artisan Bread Company in two different states with two different owners, but only one of them could own the domain name artisonbreadcompany.com. For this reason you may have to choose a domain that is different from your business name or you can offer to pay the domain owner a fee to obtain the name you want. Fees can be very expensive.
Domain names can be costly. A few domain sellers have scooped up more common commercial names like artisanbeer.com which sells for $3,388 or breadsupply.com for $1,580. Because a domain name is like owning real estate on the web, businesses have purchased and taken ownership of desired domains in the hope to sell them for a much higher price. Unless you have the funds and really want that name, you can build your online brand using something else.
Be flexible. Let’s suppose you are one of those Artisan Bread Company owners, ready to take your wonderful baked goods to customers online, but all the domain names of artisanbreadcompany.com, artisanbreadco.com, artisanbread.com are taken. Not to worry because you can add onto the name or change it for uniqueness. It is important to keep the name easy to type and remember- the shorter the better. Avoid using hyphens or underscores. It’s best not to use a number or a state name in the domain unless your business is based on them as criteria. Assuming that Paul is the owner and the baker, some examples could be paulsartisanbread.com, uniquebreads.com, orbakedheaven.com. Choose something relevant to your business. If you are adamant about matching the domain to your business name, you could change the zone.
What is a zone?The end of a domain name is called a zone. Examples of this are .com, .org, .biz., tv. etc. The most common used zone for business is .com for commercial business. It might be wiser to pick a more unique name with a .com on the end rather than register artisanbreadco.biz because customers can easily confuse it with artisanbreadco.com, sending your customers to the other website. Whatever you choose, just remember to keep it short, easy to remember and relevant, something as unique as the specialty food you produce and you can’t go wrong.
Resources:
http://vflorschuetz.com/default.aspx
http://www.whois.net/ (Check to see if the domain you want is already taken)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNS_zone (Descriptions of zones)
http://entrepreneurs.about.com/cs/marketing/a/uc071703.htm (Is your domain name hurting your sales?)
