How To Choose The Right Domain Name For Your Website

By Robert D. Thomson

How do you choose the right domain name for your website? Choosing the right web address is very important. There are a few reasons why.

The first reason it's important to choose the right web address (domain name) is because it needs to match your company (or whatever your website is for). Let's suppose your company name is Sherry's Flowers. The natural choice for a domain name would be sherrysflowers.com (assuming that name is not already taken).

So what do you do if the domain name you want is already taken? There are two primary alternatives. The first is to choose a different domain extension like .net. For the above example, that would mean selecting sherrysflowers.net. This presents a serious danger, though. Let's suppose you choose the .net address and advertise it. Your customers may forget and still go to the .com address which may bring about confusion, or worse, award sales intended to go to you, to your competition instead!

The other (and probably better) alternative is to come up with a totally different domain name altogether, something catchy that does not even necessarily even use your company name in it. For example, you could do something catchy like iloveflowers.com. This is sweet and easy to remember. And it prevents the issues of confusion with your competitor (in the aforementioned case where your company name is already taken by someone else, as a dot com address).

Another reason choosing the right address is important is because it needs to be easy to remember. If you want word-of-mouth to work well for you, you need your domain name to be something that can be easily shared verbally, even without the need for pen and paper.

You want John Doe (someone’s name, as an example) to be able to say to his coworker, “Yeah, I got great flowers for Jane from Sherry's Flowers; you can get some for your special girl at iloveflowers.com.” Something even slightly more complicated than that (such as getflowers4someone.com) might not only prevent John's coworker from retaining the address, but it may also keep John himself from remembering what the domain was in the first place!

The last but definitely not least important reason to choose the right domain name is so that people can easily type it when they are ready. If you choose a domain name that has too many numbers or strange or complex wording, they simply won't be able to type it correctly. This will prevent a great deal of traffic from reaching your site.

In summary, make sure you choose a domain name that: (1) reflects what you do (and uses your company or website's name, if possible), (2) doesn't confuse you to your potential visitors with your competition, and (3) is easy to remember and type.

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