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Beginners Choosing Your Domain Name?
Beginners Choosing Your Domain Name?
Beginners Choosing Your Domain Name- is the first critical step you will be taking and you need to do so wisely. Nowadays most start-up businesses will usually need to create a website for the simple reason that prospective customers or leads will expect to be able to check out a business online. That’s the modern way of the world.
It amazes me constantly how many startups pay so little attention to their domain name choice. Yes, there is no magic formula in picking the perfect domain name but starting out please consider in-depth what names are available to you before you dive in to purchase an unsuitable domain name.
Recently I was asked for a website quote from a business involved in health and safety training in Ireland. The business owner proudly told me that he had a domain name “xx solutions.com”. He was bemused when I said to him re the name – a solution to what? Initially, almost insulted he listened to some pointers I went on to make to him which were in his case- incorporating the word training-health & safety in the domain name indicating what the site was likely to be all about, using a .ie domain extension- preferable because his was a national and not a global offering. A day later he went on to pick and buy what I consider to be an excellent domain name. The point is that you need to reflect initially upon your choice of the domain name.
Beginners Choosing Your Domain Name – The availability dilemma?
The usual problem faced by beginners is that they have a few ideas for a good domain name in mind for their intended new website, but when they go to buy it find it’s not available- often, especially when seeking a .com. What next? Lots of us face this.
When looking for a .com extension you will often find that your choice is only available if you play with the name to see if you can get availability for a name that is close to your first choice. Consider:
- Should you pick a .com or a .net or a .org?
- What about a .ie or a .co.uk?
- Is your business global or national?
The domain name choice dilemma?
For those starting out, all of this is somewhat confusing and there are differences in general terms between domain extensions, but with some general principles in mind, you should find your name.
To generalise, each domain name extension can be taken to mean something generally:
- .net: for networking sites.
- .com: for global websites
- .org: for charities, non-profits, and other “organizations.”
- .edu: for educational institutions, like colleges, high schools, and research centers.
- .ie or .co.uk etc for national websites
If your business is a local or national 1 the reality is that you do not require a .com extension. Picking a .ie or .co.uk is obviously both a better and more relevant choice.
In recent years there are even more choices available:
There are now hundreds of domain extensions for industry-country- and professional-specific uses like .realtor, .cars, or .design, along with domain extensions for geographical locations and languages (.us and .ie or .co.uk for example) . Indeed there are even extensions for activities and events (.tennis and .wedding).
How to decide what to pick?
There is no magic formula unfortunately so you should always take your time and choose as wisely as you can and try to pick a name that is relevant to your business.
Best For Startups
Beginners Choosing Your Domain Name – Some Tips?
Some general tips are to make the name memorable(easy to remember), reflective of the site’s purpose, and easy to type into a browser if at all possible.
- It’s more difficult to get a .com domain extension because of its popularity.
- Some websites shouldn’t use a .com domain extension. Websites for geographical locations for example,
- The .org extension makes the most sense for charities and non-profits since many people still associate .org domains with charities.
- There are many other specific extensions are available. you could have .author, .florist, or .design which immediately display/indicate what your website offers? ( some feel however that online visitors/ leads tend to better remember purely out of habit a .com or .net or a country specific one)
Cost and Budgeting ?
You can pay for your name and hosting separately but many providers bundle the services together and whilst costing a little more, it is handy come renewal time to have both in one account-less to worry about.
Be mindful that some of domain names you pick may require some sort of proof of your identity proving that you’re involved with a country, industry, activity, profession, or company.
Be mindful of the fact that when starting out the yearly cost of your domain name is likely to be very low artificially so to get you into the net as it were and you should look for what the renewal price will be for future budgeting purposes. incidentally the same goes for hosting cost per annum. However the good news for the beginner is that normally for year 1 there is fantastic value to be got for both your domain name and hosting.
How to decide what to pick?
There is no magic formula unfortunately so you should always take your time and choose as wisely as you can and try to pick a name that is relevant to your business.
I specialise in helping service, health ,wellbeing providers and freelancers compete and grow online. Helping small business owners to learn what they have to learn to make use of the digital world. I Design WordPress Sites , and/or Manage a WordPress starter Site for you. Help with content plans for it.
I am a Canva Champion and offer Canva training and skills workshops. Do you find that Canva and the online world are full of learning curves? Let me show you how to navigate through them through online workshops & 1 to 1 training on Zoom for content creation and promotion . My focus is to help you/ or teach you (or key staff) to compete in the online space by creating customer-focused digital content. I will help you to glue together all the various bits together so that your business can promote itself online successfully.
