What's in a Name?
Finally, you decided to build your own online store. Let the journey begin with a complimentary offer from EasyStoreHosting.com - a free domain.
The domain name (URL) is the pathway for a customer to reach your online store. It is your address, your brand, your market and basically everything that enables others to know you, locate you, look up for you and eventually recognize your store and your business.
Each domain must have a unique name and it’s one of the most important steps when you are about to set up your online store. You may get caught up in arranging the merchandise you are going to sell on this store and the mistake many eCommerce businesses make is not giving adequate thought while selecting a name for their business.
Doing business online is equivalent to a brick and mortar store and the brand name, presence and location matters equally. Thus, choosing a good domain name adds credibility and professionalism.
The growth of online world is saturating the availability of easy and preferred names and once you start searching there are chances that every name you type would be taken. Don’t be disheartened. Look at it this way - the time you will now spend researching the name ideas may give you an opportunity to think deeper about your initiative, your target audience, your vision. You never know, new things may crop up, you may have a eureka moment and that might do more good to your business then brooding over unavailability of a preferred name!
However, let’s agree that an identity is the most important thing and we want to share with you some tips to make your thought process easier.
5 Tips on Choosing a Domain Name
- The Basics: Keep it short, catchy and easy to remember! Don’t forget to make it easy to spell and language neutral unless you are going to do business only with a small local market.
- The Avoidable: Something that sounds similar to a competing domain will never sound fresh. This is your business, you own it and you want to make it exciting for yourself first. The risk associated with having a name similar to a competitor is also with violating trademark or copyright issues, unknowingly.
- The Address: – The ”.com” is the most popular highly-rated domain and it can be difficult to find one, of your choice, that is available. As a thumb rule, favor a “.com” because we all are so used to typing “www.whatever.com”. However, if you are still planning to sell only in a specific country, for e.g. Australia, you can consider “co.au”. Since we have deeply adapted to a .com site, other extensions such as .net or .org tend to give an image that this website doesn’t cater “Worldwide”.
- Stumbled upon or Branded: It’s about your strategy. Will you purely rely on search engines to generate traffic or do you have other sources too? If search engines are the only way, pick a name that relates to both your business and the industry you operate in. So when someone searches for different keywords in a search engine the chances are higher that they may stumble upon your eCommerce website. If your strategy is to build traffic using different sources then a better idea is to choose a name which people will remember and bookmark!
- Leverage creativity: Although registering a domain name may sound like a mundane process, you don’t want to miss the creativity quotient. The domain name is actually what your online store is going to be called and more often than not, you would be asked this question, “ Why this name”? That is your chance to tell a story and connect your audience emotionally and logically. Single-word domains are usually taken and you may have to come up with your own names. You may have to tweak a word or its spelling (as long as it doesn’t sound too slang to be taken seriously) or think of two words combined to form a single word which makes it unique to spell (such as fantabulous = fantastic + fabulous).
Here to Help You
At EasyStoreHosting, we believe customization is the key and we want to be your virtual assistant in every possible way. If you need someone to brainstorm the naming ideas, please feel free to contact us. We are real people waiting to help you with anything that makes it easier for you to create an eCommerce website.
Tools to Help you with Domain Names Suggestions
When it comes to picking names, we reply on NameCheap. If you find what you were looking for, all you have to do is inform our team and we will set it up for you.
Other suggestions:
- NameStation
- NameMesh - provides various categories such as SEO, Fun, Short, etc. domain names to search for
- Domize
It can be difficult to craft a creative name that shares the essence of your business but Keep Calm and Keep Searching.
