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Webbed Feet UK, web developers in Salisbury, Wiltshire

Choosing a domain name for your business website

The Internet has become an integral part of the world of business. Many people now shop online, choosing to purchase low cost items such as books, CDs and games from web sites such as Amazon.co.uk or Play.com, or higher priced items such as PCs and laptops from the likes of Dell.co.uk. People also turn to the Internet to find local businesses in their area, such as plumbers, mechanics, or dentists. It is therefore becoming increasingly important for businesses to have some form of online presence, and choosing a suitable domain name for your business web site is an important aspect of this.

Use your business name

For most situations it would make sense to use the name of the business for the domain name. This is very important for businesses with a certain level of brand awareness, as many existing and future customers will often type in the business name into the browser address bar (known as direct traffic), followed by a .com or .co.uk. For example, a business which trades under the name “Suzy’s Flowers” in Salisbury may wish to use the domain name suzysflowers.co.uk. It would also make sense to purchase the .com domain and point this to the web site, so anybody visiting suzysflowers.co.uk or suzysflowers.com will be directed to Suzy’s business web site.

If the domain name suzysflowers.co.uk is already taken, it may be tempting to purchase the domain name suzys-flowers.co.uk instead (note the hyphen). Usually this would be a poor idea. Firstly, people typing the business name directly into the address bar are unlikely to include a hyphen in the name, but instead type in suzysflowers.co.uk or suzysflowers.com and land on someone else’s web site. Furthermore, people passing the web site onto friends through word of mouth are likely to forget the hyphen. They may say to a friend “I visited Suzy’s flowers .co.uk yesterday and it was wonderful”, with no mention of the hyphened domain. The friend will therefore also land on someone else’s web site.

How about a generic term?

A generic term may be useful in some situations; usually when there is no real brand awareness or the business is purely online and aims to create a brand around the generic domain name. A great example of this is the web site www.classiccarsforsale.co.uk which we designed. This business is purely based online, and is an online portal for classic cars for sale. The domain name is very important as it is short, easy to remember, and very descriptive of what the web site does. It also performs very well in search engines for high traffic terms, such as “classic cars”, “cars”, “cars for sale” and “classic cars for sale”. The domain therefore helps greatly with the overall SEO campaign; especially as the links pointing to the web site contain great keywords as many web sites use “Classic Cars For Sale” as the link text when linking to www.classiccarsforsale.co.uk (this is very beneficial to ranking in search engines).

Unfortunately, many decent generic names will already be taken. A web designer in Salisbury would no longer be able to purchase salisburywebdesign.co.uk for example, as it is already registered.

This article is categorised within:

Online Business Website Design