The Value of your Business Domain Name
What Is a Business Domain Name?
A domain name is the physical name of a website, and it’s arguably the most important part of your website. Much like your physical address or a phone number, there cannot be two identical domain names.
As well as its is the combination of letters, number and symbols someone types in their browser to access a specific web address directly.
For example, if you wanted to visit creatives website, you couldn’t access it by typing “creatives” in your browser — that would simply provide you search results for “creatives”and would not render the actual website. Instead, you need to type the domain name “creatives.me” in the browser to navigate to creative’s website.
Choosing it is an important moment for any entrepreneur when starting their business. Your business’s name defines you and your brand—and it will stick with you for a while.
Just as your business’s name is your identity among your customers, your community, and your market, your business domain name is your identity online.
Its how people browsing the web will find you and promote your business.
Tips for Choosing a Business Domain Name
1. Keep It Catchy
Choosing a top-notch name is a balancing act.
You want it to be memorable—something that a potential customer could fully internalize, remember, and pass along in an email, text, on the phone, or even in a conversation.
Research done by McKinsey & Company shows that word of mouth is the primary factor behind 20% to 50% of all purchase decisions—so you want to make sure that people can remember your business’s domain name to the point where they can pass it along to a friend
Choosing your it is a great branding exercise—this is your time to get creative and smart with how you tie your to your domain name.
2. Keep It Simple
But on the other hand, your business domain name should be simple.
Long abbreviations, double meanings, numbers, hyphenated words…they can be busy and distracting.
When you’re brainstorming, think about how hard the name is to spell, and type it into Google or your browser. If potential customers get caught up trying to work through your domain name, you’ll lose a significant portion of your traffic.
3. Keep It Short
Along those same lines, keep your name short.
Even if the best name you have in the works meets all your other requirements—it’s catchy, simple, to the point, but just a little long—you’re better off having a shorter domain name.
Say you run a deli and want to build a website to facilitate online ordering.
The internet is all about getting the answers and results you want—fast. If your name is lengthy, wordy, and slows customers down, your business and online presence will suffer for it.
Other tips:
4. Make It Pronounceable
If close to half the amount of purchasing decisions depend on word-of-mouth marketing, then you better hope that people can pronounce your business domain name to share it with others.
When you’re brainstorming domain names, do a quick check to see if you can literally say it out loud. Ask a friend or colleague to read your business domain name and say it back to you.
If they fumble on the words, take a long time to internalize it or completely mispronounce it all together, maybe it’s better to scrap that name.
And in another sure-fire way to make sure your name is as clear as possible—reverse this test. Say it out loud to a friend, and ask them to write it down on a piece of paper.
Did they get it right? That’s a good sign that the business domain name is easy to understand and totally clear when you hear it said out loud.
5. Make It Obvious
Having a memorable name is great—and if the stars align and your business domain name is both catchy and clear, then good for you!
But when it doubt, go with obvious.
You want it to be intuitive and digestible. Having a subtle and clever name might not fully register with your visitors, and you could lose the opportunity to grab their attention and convey what you do.
If your visitor can click on your website domain name and intuitively understand what kind of page they’ll land on or what business you run, then that’s a big positive for your business domain name.