August’s Expert of the Month is...very excitingly...Mr Site’s own CEO, Clifford McDowell. Here, Clifford shares his advice on choosing a domain name that really works.
“Whether you’re setting up a community, hobby, business or any indeed any other kind of website, getting your domain name right can really boost your site traffic. Ideally, you would use the name of the venture itself - but often, customers find that the name of their organisation is either too long or not practical to use as a domain name.
You may be wondering why it’s so important to get the domain name right, but remember it’s going to be used in marketing in many different ways - via text, on business cards or even through word of mouth. That’s why I’ve prepared a few top tips to help you choose a domain name that really works:
Keep it short
Your domain name shouldn’t be longer than 16 characters. Anything more and most visitors will get bored or mistype it.
Take pity on bad spellers...
Avoid hard-to-spell words. Unfortunately, spell-check doesn’t work when typing in a website addess; remember, even if you’re a spelling bee champion, lots of people struggle with spelling.
To further help all the terrible spellers of the world, be wary of using words with silent letters like knife, castle, climb, or plumb ...you get the idea.
Don’t forget, lots of people surf the net on their phones
Sometimes some very odd or colourful phrases can come up when you type in a word using predictive text on a smart phone, so check what happens with your chosen domain name...plus make sure you check on several phones as they may use different dictionaries.
Love Americans
Reach out to potential friends in America and avoid words with multiple spellings like colour or color, harbour or harbor, jewellery or jewelry; this will increase the chance of people finding you. If you do go for words with multiple spellings, we recommend that you buy domain names with both spellings - with Mr Site, you can have multiple domain names that all point to your main site.
Want to use numbers?
That’s fine, but I recommend registering different spellings of the number. So, if your website address is www. Ilove2shop.com then you should also register ‘Ilovetwoshop’ and ‘Ilovetoshop’.
Differentiate
Try to avoid a domain name that’s similar to your competitors. If you sell books then www.amazonz.com may sound like a good idea but potential visitors will just think your site is fraudulent; therefore they may not bother visiting.
Don’t get caught up in an ownership dispute
Avoid trademarks. For example, an avid Man U obsessive setting up a fan site might want to call their site www.gomanchesterutd.com - but as ‘Manchester Utd‘ is trademarked, they might claim the name, ruining all your hard work.
Be positive
Generally, people’s first experience of your venture will be through your chosen domain name so make it an upbeat one and don’t use negative words.
Now you know what to do and what not to do, it’s time to actually choose your domain name. Personally, I recommend sitting down with a few friends and some pen and paper (and maybe even a glass of wine) to get the creative juices flowing. Chat about what your venture focuses on – especially any imagery or values you want people to associate with it. Write it all down and then see if you can put a couple of words together; you could also try abbreviating them to see how they sound. This is exactly what the team behind www.lastminute.com did when they were starting out – and look how well things turned out for them!
Follow these tips and you’ll be well on your way to creating a website with a spectacular name which everyone comments on and more importantly remembers!”
Want to share your thoughts on this with Clifford? Or even just let him know how you think Mr Site is doing? He’d love to hear from you so why not drop him an email at ceo@mrsite.co.uk. He can’t promise to reply to every email personally but he will read all messages.