Every website needs a domain name (web address) so that customers can find you! Finding a domain name that exactly matches your business name is hard these days due to very high demand. A good starting point is to think about your product or services and ask what words a customer would use to search for these items. There are some good online tools that show you common search terms and it is well worth mucking around with them for an hour-or-two to get some ideas – try the free trail on http://www.wordtracker.com/.

 

You need to register your domain name and most ISPs will let you do this with them but you should compare prices and ensure the domain is register in your name so you are in control of your domain name if you ever change hosts. The ISP might even have their own domain name suggestion tool where you type in a few words and it tells you available domains.

 

You should not expect to pay much more than £15 for the most expensive .com domains. If you find a really cheap offer double check who owns the domain when it is registered!

 

For more tips and information you can visit:

• http://www.nominet.org.uk/ - The .uk domains registrar.
• http://www.internic.net/ - The .com registrars with good FAQs.
• http://www.eurid.eu/ - For info on .eu domain names.
• http://www.ispa.org.uk/ - The UK’s ISP Association.