CHOOSING YOUR DOMAIN NAME

[L]et’s talk about domain names and how to go about buying a domain name for your business. The time has long since passed that you could choose a name for your business and then acquire the matching .com domain name to use for your website. These days, it’s often the availability of a domain name that determines your business name and in some cases, it can even shape the business name positively. When I launched the Design Space, I thought I really wanted to have designspace.com. But of course it wasn’t available and I ended up buying www.thedesignspace.co. With hindsight, I’m actually delighted about how that turned out. The .co is memorable and in ‘real world’ speak, actually stands for ‘Company’. I was able to incorporate the ‘Co’ part of the domain into the logo and make a much stronger brand statement than the comparatively boring, designspace.com.

So, if your first choice domain isn’t available, don’t despair. Get creative with a lesser know TLD (top level domain) and think about adding in small prefix words like ‘the’ to shape the domain you want.

People often ask me if it’s crucial to have one of the bigger domain endings, like ‘.com’ or ‘.co.uk’ to give more legitimacy to a business. I honestly think that times are changing and some of the newer domain ending are going to end up supporting niche markets really well. A great example is .photo and .photography which I am seeing pop up more and more often. 

The other question people often ask (if they are based in the UK) is whether it’s better to have .com or .co.uk? There is no definitive answer to this. Back in the day, I bought my custom portfolio domain www.melissalove.co.uk, partly because the .com was already taken (by a sex therapist in New York, in case you want to check it out – I’m sure she’s excellent) but more so because I had done some research and knew that there weren’t any other independent web designers in the UK, specialising in photography websites. I knew I wanted to work on a one-to-one basic with UK-based photographers and using the .co.uk domain was the easiest way to let prospective clients know that I was based in the same country as they were.

With the Design Space, about 50% of our clients are based in the USA, Australia and other European countries, as well as the UK, so the more neutral .co made perfect sense. If it’s important for you to have a country-specific domain, to let your potential customers know where you are based, then go for it. If you think that a country-specific domain will hold you back, then choose something neutral.

That said, I do wholeheartedly recommend buying the popular alternative extensions, to prevent someone else from having them (ie. not having a sex therapist alter ego, like I do,  who is probably now wondering where all of this referral website traffic is coming from)!

WHERE TO BUY YOUR DOMAIN NAME FROM

So, where to buy from? If you are buying both a domain name and hosting package, then it does make sense to choose one provider. But it’s far more important to choose the right web space host, rather than adding on hosting as an afterthought to a cheap domain package. 

If you’re a serial buyer of domain names that might come in handy one day, like I am, it’s perfectly fine to shop around and use one of the bigger name domain specialists, like 123 Reg or NamesCo and not buy their hosting package. For example, I have all of my domains with GoDaddy, because it’s cheaper to buy and renew them there, but they are all hosted through another company, whose hosting I prefer. 

Although it’s good to shop around on price, there are still a few key features you should make sure you have when buying a domain name. Here’s my checklist of things your domain hosting company should offer:

• Email hosting (obvious, but some email services are better than others)
• Domain forwarding (for forwarding domain names or subdomains to your main domain, when SEO isn’t crucial)
• Domain mapping (for linking additional parked domains to your main domain which may carry SEO or traffic benefits) *
• Support for subdomains
• Auto renewals so you don’t ever let your domain expire

* There is a really great article by Elegant Theme about domain mapping, which you can read here.

If you’ve been creative when choosing a domain name, we’d love to hear how it’s worked for you.

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