Website Names

MrYogiBear

Hi just wanted to ask if anyone has any tips regarding names for websites, should i leave a '-' out of the domain link,is .com better or should i use .co.uk,or something else? shorter the better?, or if the name is catchy would that be better? i am now really getting confused as to what would be best.
If anyone has any advise i would be most grateful as am a novice when it comes to this.
Thanks!

dacouch

If you are hoping for orders outside of the UK then .com is normally better as most non uk buyers would type in .com and most foreign businesses use .com. It would be worth you buying .com and .co.uk this stops your competitors registering these names and feeding off your website. If you want to be extra cautious you can also register .eu and .net and .biz etc

As a general rule its best to have a website name that reflects what your business is, think about how you would find or remember your website if you were the customer. Use this to make your decision (Maybe ask some friends or customers as well).

I sell websites and one of the best bits of advice I could give you is that web designers like to show off their skills and put in flashy bits etc on the website. What you need to think about is not having a flashy website but a website that your customers like to use which are often completely different. Again put yourself in your customers position to see what fuctions you like. Have a look at other websites (Both competitors and in other fields and note down the parts of the website and the parts you do not like and use these to help you work out what you want)

Remember your website is about making you money and you will want it to be future proof, its normally best to avoid friends doing the website or bedroom programmers as its not unusual for you to fall out or they lose interest. When this happens you cannot change things on your website, so try and find an established company, basically excersises the same or more caution as you would with buying anything important for your business.

There are some very helpful threads on this forum about starting your website, promoting it etc etc. Scroll down and and have a read of them, if you need any more advice feel free to post up here, or the techie forum if its a technical question. Have a read about the S.E.O (Search Engine Optimization) threads as they have lots of useful information on how to make you website come up high when people google your trade, a lot of the things they recommend is free as well

Tea3

I agree with the above and would like to add I personally think its best to avoid website names with a '-' in them. Just think how it sounds trying to tell someone your website name if it was jones-brothers for example - over the phone would you say www.jones hyphen brothers.co.uk or www.jones dash brothers.co.uk" etc - and I bet some people would use _ instead of - and after a few attempts give up or (have heard of this) they would type www.jonesdashbrothers.co.uk into the search engine and again not find your website. If you can stick to something simple and without any dashes etc. My business name is catchy and original (made up word) but on hindsight catches some people out with the spelling so best think clear, easy to remember and easy to tell people what the actual address is.

pcfixmanchester

Dacouch said "What you need to think about is not having a flashy website but a website that your customers like to use" and I think thats the best piece of advice you can be given when setting up your site. Also remember that while you may be looking at your newly designed flashy website on a nice big monitor and a fast computer your potential customer might still have an old slower computer, or on a small screen laptop or even at the other end of the spectrum be using an Iphone or Google phone were all your flash will just be ignored and your page will be presented on a very small screen.

Onto the domain names, I agree with what is said above, but would also add that for the sake of £5 each per year, to buy the different variations on your company name and spelling, and if you are running a business were your customers know your name and refer to you as such then register your name as a domain. So that way if your customer always calls you Bob Jones as apposed to Robert Jones Associates they can find you by going to bobjones.co.uk as well as RobertJonesAssociates.co.uk. As for the "-" I would say if your budget can afford it buy it. If you in a competitive area then you dont want someone else to register the "-" version of your website.

Think abit laterally when coming up with domain names, if you already in a very busy industry, what words would a customer use to find your service/product ? What alternative words could you use as a domain that you might use to attract traffic ? B&Q are the perfect example of this, they registered DIY.com as that is what most people would search for. PM me if you want some advice/ more examples of this, as I know it can sometimes be a minefield.

Lastly, why have only one website, If you can post a comment on here, then you can use google sites to build a site for free that has free hosting and is very easy to do and the you just buy a domain and point that domain at the free google site. That way you can create many sites for very niche and particular areas of your services or products that a potential customer would be looking for, again if this makes no sense to you PM me and I can explain in more detail.

Good luck with it all

Andy ;-)