How to Choose a Domain Name for Your Ecommerce Business

Domain names were not always for sale. They used to be free.

Until 1995, you didn’t have to pay for a domain name. That’s a full 12 years after Paul Mockapetris and Jon Postel invented the domain name system.

Today, we have more than 1,500 top-level domains (TLDs)—the word, characters, or letters after the last dot on a domain name and before any slash— like .com, .site, .online, .store, and the like.

We also have over 366 million domain names registered today.

Oh, and we pay for them too. Someone even paid a whopping $$49.7 million for a domain name.

Most domain name acquisitions go unannounced. But thanks to an SEC filing, the most valuable domain name acquired is Cars.com at $872 million.

Thus it’s safe to say that individuals and businesses are comfortable pulling out their wallets to buy domain names.

Yes, your Ecommerce business will need one.

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The Domain Names Rush

Today, domain adoption is high.

More people have more than one domain name. In a study published by Namecheap, only 46 percent of domain name owners have just a domain.

Hence, if you need a domain name today, you’d be more strategic than someone in the 1980s.

Unlike the year 1990, though, you’d be paying for your domain name. And if you’re like me, you want the most bang for your buck.

Although getting the most value for your money is hard as demand for domain names continues to climb. According to Namecheap, one person bought 121,880 domain names, and they have dozens of customers who have over 100, 500, and even 5,000 domain names.

With more people take valuable domain names, how do you get one for your business?

The trick is to pay attention.

Choose Your Domain Name Carefully

You can’t have a website without a domain name. However, domain names have evolved beyond the basic need to be found online.

Domain names have become potent tools for building a business, brand, and even driving sales. Names that are more memorable, shorter, simpler, and sharper also get a lot more visitors.

It’s easy to remember Bing, Google, Facebook, Apple, and Nike. People type those domain names into search engines without thinking about it.

When choosing a domain name, keep these marketing, sales, and psychological reasons in mind:

  • A good domain name keeps your brand in the mind of your audience.
  • It spreads the word about your business.
  • It attracts walk-in traffic.
  • Great domain names give a professional feel to your business.
  • An excellent domain name inspires curiosity, which can convert to a sale.

Now, how should you choose a domain name that gets buyers to notice you?

10 Tips to Choose a Domain Name for Your Ecommerce Businesses

If choosing the perfect domain name is this important, what should you consider when choosing one? Let’s explore the tips to help guide you.

1. Put Your Brand On Your Domain Name

In one study, 77 percent of buyers bought items based on their familiarity with the brand. What’s more? Over 90 percent of these buys shopped for those brands unconsciously.

I hold weekly interview sessions with founders, CEOs, and industry leaders. In one of those meetings, I had an hour-long chat with the founder and CEO of Distant Job, Sharon Koifman.

So I asked Koifman why he chose the name “Distant Job” for his business. He responded, “That was the available .com domain name.” Koifman immediately shook his head and said, “That’s utter nonsense.”

If you’re like most professionals, businesses, or startups, you already know it’s challenging to find a domain name that matches your brand.

That’s if you are ignoring everything and holding on to getting a .com address—at the expense of losing or diluting your brand name.

Your brand carries a lot of weight—protect it. That’s what your customers, clients, and everyone else knows. But more importantly, that’s what they’ll recognize and pay you for, without knowing it.

Remember the study I cited at the beginning of this section?

Consider using a top-level domain (TLD) that’s more indicative that you run an Ecommerce business. Like a .store domain name.

For example, if your brand is Anthonia, you could use Anthonia.store for your domain name. At the time of this writing, that domain name is still available!

Why is this a fantastic domain name to use?

  • It’s not taken
  • The domain name is your brand name, so you don’t have to give it up
  • It’s evident that it’s an ecommerce business

But what if you don’t have a brand yet?

Then you want to…

2. Make Your Domain Name Short, Simple, and Special

Whether you have an established brand, like Cristiano Ronaldo, who uses CR7denim.store or you’re just starting out, you want to keep your domain name short.

Short domain names are memorable and simple. Plus, a top-level domain that doesn’t force you to use a convoluted string of words makes your domain name special.

Regardless you do, aim to keep your personal brand or company name even if it’s unknown yet. You could use other top-level domains like .tech, .website, .store, or .space, if relevant, to keep your brand name.

However, it’s probably a no-brainer for ecommerce stores to go with .store domain names.

You’ll notice that this is becoming the standard practice of big brands. For example, the American media empire, Meredith Corporation, owns the online version of their publications, magazine.store.

3. Make It Memorable

If you can’t just say your domain name and your friends and family will remember them, it’s less likely that anyone will remember.

Let’s say you sell homemade cookies. Finding that domain name in .com, .net, or even .co might be very hard or impossible. But you don’t have to give up on it.

Instead of misspelling it as homemadecookiez.com, with the “z” replacing the “s,” you can keep the spelling. So you’d use homemadecookies.store, and you don’t have to correct any spellings.

Keeping the correct spelling helps you avoid confusing anyone with misspellings.

For this, you can run a radio test.

Call your family and friends, say your domain name and ask them to write it down. If they wrote it correctly without any errors, then you have taken a good name.

Your goal with the radio test is to know if people will spell the name correctly when they hear it over the phone, on the radio, during a conversation, or in any casual situation.

4. Avoid Special Characters: Numbers and Hyphens

Using numbers and hyphens means your audience will have more things to remember. If they have more things to remember, you risk them misspelling your domain name and having the name misprinted on surfaces.

Save yourself and everyone else the headache. Use a name that doesn’t need any extra effort to be written, pronounce, or remembered.

5. Remember the Search Engines!

It’s not just humans who need to know what your domain name is about; search engines need that knowledge. So find a domain name that’s relevant to your niche or business.

Sixty-three percent of top-performing domains have some keyword in them. In some industries, 76 percent of the op domains have the keywords in them.


Image Credit: Search Engine Watch

If you sell custom mugs, for example, you can use that keyword in your domain name. Let’s say your brand is Amy. You’d use Amycustommugs.store or Amymugs.store. Heck, you could even use Custommugs.store to own that keyword.

This is an essential SEO practice, but it can differentiate your brand and even rank you higher in search.

6. Avoid Legal and Copyright Issues

Do your due diligence. Make sure that your domain name isn’t linked to a registered trademark, business name or brand.

Use the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) website to do your findings or get a lawyer to help you. It doesn’t help much that you’ve found a great domain name only to have to give it up because the name is a registered trademark.

You can take your copyrights verification a step further. Run a global check for your desired domain to ensure it won’t become a copyright infringement in any market you’ll be serving.

Use the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) website to run your checks. You can also use alternative sources like Trademarks411 for your research.

Saving your business any potential legal problems is a smart decision. Get all the help you can find.

If your visitors can confuse your domain name for a competitor’s, you may lose the case. Make sure your domain name stands out and clear.

Even if you have an existing ecommerce store, consider protecting your brand. Bloomberg had a case where the URS and UDRP didn’t favor their plea against a Bloomberg.store and other domain names that included their brand name.

Some brands explicitly prohibit people from registering domain names that contain their brand names. WordPress is a ready example.

In short, don’t use “WordPress” in your domain name. You’re welcome to use WP though. Do your due diligence. If your desired domain will contain Facebook, NFL, NBA, Nike, CocaCola, celebrity names, or any known brand names, verify if these brands allow such usage or not. And how they allow it if they do.

7. Make Your Domain Name Mobile Friendly

Apart from branding, put mobile-friendliness at the heart of your domain name. At 52 percent, more than half of all internet traffic comes from mobile devices, so you want to position your domain name for that audience.

Although the number of website visitors from mobile has dipped a little, the figure remains high. Your users shouldn’t have to fall victim to autocorrect changes.

Domain names with a single word do better. They are less prone to errors. Think of Bing, Google, Facebook, and the like.

In contrast, lengthy domain name or those with special characters lend themselves to autocorrect changes. Think of names like marthastewarth.com or comic-con.org. Those names are awesome in themselves, but they leave a chance for typos.

Comic-con.org is even a bigger culprit. It requires users to switch from letters to special characters on their keyboards to type the domain name into their mobile browsers.

When deciding what domain name to use, type your choices into your phone to test how easy it feels before registering. This is a simple usability test to know how your audience will experience entering the domain name into a browser on their mobile.

8. Choose Domain Extensions that Represent Your Industry

Search engines attribute websites to their top-level domains. If you used a .co.uk, it gets the message that you’re targeting people from the United Kingdom. A .ca is for people in Canada or interested in topics related to Canada.

Hence, Google, Bing, and other search engines classify contents partly by their top-level domains. If your website is an ecommerce store, you’re better off using .store instead of .xyz or other non-related TLDs.

9. Consider Buying an Existing Domain Name

Imagine you have a store in the heart of Manhattan. Wouldn’t it be nice to have the name Manhattan.store as your domain name?

Well, there’s a little problem.

It’s taken.

But you can buy it if you want to have it. Having a domain name like that can give your brand a ton of advantage.

You’re “The Manhattan store.” Yes, the unrivaled Manhattan.store.

At the time of this writing, Manhattan.store is available for sale on GoDaddy.

Getting a premium domain name like this one can give you a ton of unfair advantage. It’s short and insanely memorable.

10. Differentiate Your Brand from Competitors

You don’t want to send your visitors to your competitors if they had a little typo when entering your domain name into a browser.

Differentiate your brand. Make sure it’s unique and won’t send traffic to your competitors. More so, you can avoid legal troubles here too. If your domain name is misleading, it can attract legal issues.

Choose the Perfect Domain Name for Your Ecommerce Site

You don’t have to use all the tips here.

Not everything applies to your situation. But the more you put to work, the better for your ecommerce domain name and business.

For example, you don’t have to choose an awkward-sounding domain name just to have your keyword. You can find a short, memorable, and creative name that’ll pique your buyers’ interest.

You can use a service like GoDaddy.com and other domain name services to register a suitable domain name for your ecommerce site.

A big advantage of using a .store domain name for an ecommerce store is that you can find unique domain names that match all of the criteria I’ve listed above. Plus, the domain extension quite naturally lines up with an ecommerce business.

Wrapping Up

When you choose domain names for your ecommerce businesses, make sure they represent your brand, and it’s easy for buyers to enter into a mobile phone. Cover the legal ends of your domain name and protect your brand from unnecessary legal disturbances.

It’s time to go and choose what you love. I wish you luck.

The post How to Choose a Domain Name for Your Ecommerce Business appeared first on Ecommerce Platforms.



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