Your domain name goes on business cards, gets said out loud on the phone, and sticks with you for years. Most bad choices come from deciding in five minutes at a registrar's checkout. Here are the rules worth knowing first.
The phone test
Say the domain out loud, once, to someone who's never seen it written. If they can type it correctly, it passes. This single test catches almost every bad idea: creative misspellings ("kwik", "shoppe"), hyphens, numbers ("4" for "for"), and words that sound like other words. If you have to spell it out letter by letter, keep looking.
Shorter beats cleverer
Every extra syllable is a typo opportunity. maple.cafe beats maplestreetcoffeehouse.com. If your business name is long, consider a shortened version for the domain — the full name can still appear on the website itself.
.com, country endings, and the new ones
- .com is still the default people type from memory. If it's available, take it.
- Country endings (.de, .fr, .co.uk, .ma) are excellent for businesses serving one country — locals trust them, and they're often available when the .com isn't.
- New endings (.shop, .cafe, .studio) are legitimate and increasingly familiar. One caution: some older audiences still hesitate to trust them.
Check before you fall in love
Before committing, search the name — is another business (especially in your industry) already using something confusingly similar? A trademark clash can force an expensive rename later. Also glance at social media: matching handles are a bonus, not a requirement.
Mistakes people regret
- Letting the domain expire. Set it to auto-renew with a card that won't expire soon. Lapsed domains get snapped up by resellers within hours.
- Registering it under someone else's account. Whoever's account holds the domain controls it. It should be yours — not your designer's, not your nephew's.
- Buying ten variants "just in case." One good domain plus auto-renew serves better than a drawer of defensive purchases.
Once you've chosen, the domain connects to wherever your website lives — that part is a ten-minute task, explained here.