The Art of Choosing a Great Domain Name

Choosing a Domain Name can be difficult at times because you may find that your first choice is already taken but often it can only mean a matter of changing a word or inserting a word and you can get close to what you want.

Giving names to things can be a real chore, exciting, draining, mind boggling, challenging, demanding, next to impossible, or by working through different steps it can be reasonably easy.

When you are choosing a name for anything, whether it is the new small business you are starting, a blog site, a website  or whatever, the process is much the same.   For a new boat or a dog or cat, you may choose a name that you like the sound of  or one that has some emotional attachment, but when it is for a business or a club the name is chosen in a different way.

Here are some basic steps to help you work through the naming process:

1. how long are you going to keep the business because if it has your name in it you may find it harder to sell if you want to sell it, or not get as much for it
2. you want to choose a name that people will easily remember so the shorter the better unless the name has some significance
3. if you are only going to be selling one type of product or service you could use that in the name, but if you do and want to diversify down the track you could be forced to change your name so it is best not to make it too niche specific
4. take care if you are considering using incorrect spellings, like daze for days, because when people are typing into the web browser it may make it harder to remember the name correctly, sometimes this works for you, sometimes it doesn’t
5. the name should give some idea of what you do, for example if you do lawn mowing and gardening, you could use Green Thumbs in preference to say, Think Green
6. make sure it easy to say as well as remember, it needs to roll off people tongues without any problem whatsoever

You can see how there is quite a bit to think about when  naming your business.  I have seen a badly chosen name really hinder the progress of a business.  If this does happen to you and you get people say, ‘what was that again?’ or ‘could you repeat that?’ consider renaming and doing a big fan fare promotion with the new name.