The domain-your brand

Remember a domain is reflecting yourself, your company. It is your brand. A well chosen domain name, will make your website more visible, will be found easier and quicker.

There are many ways brand names develop and it can be more than useful to recognize how a brand name can be defined. You may use:

1. Fantasy words or foreign words, such as eBay, Etsy or Coccinelle

2. A descriptive name that guides people to the right page, like hairdresser-harrogate

3. Associated words that do not directly describe a site, but still have a connotation to its content, such as Homebase or Superdrug.

4. Names that are not at all related to the product, but are real words, such as Subway and Apple

You better not use general words describing an action or a just a location. They are not recommended, as they bring little individuality and distinctiveness (for example fishing.com)

Make sure your domain is short and easy to memorize. The seeking person must remember it and be able to type it into the browser or search machine without spelling mistakes. The longer the domain name, the higher the risk to make typos and to forget about the actual name.

Attention: Although it is very tempting to include several keywords into your domain name, try to concentrate on only one word. Again, this will keep the domain name short. A keyword in your domain makes sense if it reflects the subject of your website.

.com, .org, .co.uk or .au? What is the right domain extension?

It depends on the purpose of the domain and what area it suppose to encompass. Do you have an online business that only sells within the UK? Then a .co.uk domain will be the optimal choice. Is your target group international? Then a .com or .net domain will be more suitable.

There are special domain extensions worth considering, such as .bar or .shop that can influence your marketing in a positive way. Bare in mind that special extensions are not remembered by everyone. Thus we recommend adding a second more common domain (.com, .org) in addition.