What’s in a Name?

Choosing and using a strong domain name for your website can be the difference between success and failure for your Leeds Web Design.

Your domain name can say a lot about who you are and what your business is all about and is the ‘location addresses for your website on the net. Compare the concept to a bricks ’n’ mortar business. If its location is poor, then it’s unlikely to get many visitors. The same is true for your website’s domain name.

With this in mind, here are the top tips for choosing a web design and good domain name for your website.

1. Make it Memorable

Your domain name forms your website address (often called a URL) must be easy to remember. Whilst book marking a website is easy to do thus avoiding the need to remember website addresses, in reality many people don’t do it. As such, if people are going to remember your website address if they see it in your advertising or are verbally told it, then it should be easy to grasp.

Avoid overlay complex names and avoid initials unless they are really obvious. For example the initials in the domain ‘bbc.co.uk’ are very obvious in their meaning to most people, but unless your business has the brand recognition that the BBC enjoys, initials are best avoided.

2. Short and Sweet

The maximum characters you should use for a domain name is twenty. The shorter the better to be honest with many people saying 10 is the maximum to go for. Anything over this number can not only be difficult to remember, but can be miss pelt.

3. Choose your Extension Wisely

The most common domain extensions in the UK are ‘.co.uk’ and ‘.com’ e.g. ‘keyclicks.co.uk’ Many other domain extensions are available e.g. .net, .org.uk, .TV, info, gov.uk etc. However, be aware, some domain extensions work better that others and are more memorable at the same time. It’s important to realize that some domain extensions also have restrictions. For example ‘gov.uk’ is restricted to government organizations whilst ‘.ac.uk’ domains are restricted to academic organizations such as universities.

The ‘must have’ domain extensions to get for your site are the .co.uk and the .com ones. If you can’t get either of these, it’s even worth renaming your website or even your company to fit in with a .com and .co.uk domain name pair that you can obtain.

If you can’t get the .com go for a .net but be prepared, as most people will try the .com domain before the .net when trying to guess your web address. So you could lose traffic to other websites.

The type of domain extension you use might also have an influence on the type of website you plan to operate. For example, some people have come to expect certain types of websites with certain domain extensions. For example ‘.org.uk’ extensions are used by UK based, non-profit organizations and ‘.net’ extensions are often used by technology or Internet related companies.

4. Spelling Rules KO

Having a difficult to spell domain name could land you in more trouble as a miss pelt name could drive your visitor towards your competitor’s website. If you have a difficult to spell name, consider registering the possible misspellings of your main domain name and even the Americanized versions of the word if available. For example if your main domain is “thetyreshop.com” also registers “thetireshop.com” if you can.

A good domain name contains only words that are easy to pronounce and spell with a good combination of words or letters that are used in everyday language and does not contain foreign words that may be difficult for a non-native speaker to use.

5. I Wanna Tell You a Story

Good domain names tell a story and are descriptive. In other words the domain you use should be directly relevant to your business and describe what it does.
One such method is to use your company name as we have done in ‘keyclicks.co.uk’ for our domain. The other angle is to use a phrase, not related to your company name; but one which describes what your business or website is all about. For example the domain ‘diy.com’ for the UK home improvements retail chain B&Q, is superb as it describes exactly what they do i.e. “do-it-yourself”, is short, easy to remember and is easy to spell and say. Yes, this domain does use initials, however the brand recognition of B&Q in the UK is so great, as is usage of the phrase ‘DIY’ in everyday English they can get away with it.

6. Nothing Fancy

It’s never a good idea to use numbers or hyphens within a domain name. For a start many people don’t know what a hyphen is (incredible we know, but you’d be surprised), secondly people don’t pay attention to symbols and numbers cause confusion.

For example if your domain is “mywebsite4u.com”, when telling people this domain, you’ll need to make sure they understand that the ‘4’ is a number and not the word ‘four’. In other words you have to start explaining your domain which is always a bad sign. If you do wish to include numbers, register the alphabetical equivalent domain as well and point it to your website. i.e. “mywebsitefouryou.com” and also perhaps “mywebsiteforyou.com” in order to avoid confusion.