According to Verisign, the total number of registered domain names rose to 294 million Top Level Domains as of March 31, 2015. Worldwide registrations have grown by 6.5% every year, and that’s only among sites that end with .com, .net, .org, and other well-established extensions. With that growing number, the available field of online real estate grows narrower (especially for those vying for the most coveted .com extension).
These days, a business name needs to be unique, not just for customer appeal, but also to prevent you from stepping on any legal lines. When looking to register the right domain name, entrepreneurs must consider SEO rankability, sustainability, extensions, pronounce ability and other factors.
For any entrepreneur ready to build a website for their business, you can never put too much stock into coming up with a good domain name: after all, it’ll likely be the first thing most potential customers will encounter. Here are a few factors you might not have considered. This is not a decision to be left to a junior in your company, this is something the leadership need control.
Attractability
The first thing people usually consider when naming their company (and therefore, registering a domain) is the impression they want to give off to people who have never heard of them. New companies can opt for a branded domain, which gives some indication of what they do: nobody is going to mistake Travelocity, TravelZoo, or ShermansTravel for anything other than trip-planning sites, for example.
However, appealing to human curiosity might work better for your brand. For example, Hopper, Kayak, and Viator have each earned success from their less direct, but easier to remember, branding. The latter are more likely to attract young, curious and tech-savvy consumers while the former finds reliable business with older travelers who are looking for credible, service-driven businesses. Consider your target demographic and how they’re likely to find out about you when coming up with a domain name.
Word-of-Mouth-Ability
According to research from Nielsen published in 2013, 84% of consumers around the world said they trusted word of mouth recommendations above all other advertising. By now, with the rampant takeoff of influencer marketing (an overwhelming percentage of people are motivated to purchase after reading trusted blog sources and customer reviews, according to Adweek), the number is hovering somewhere above the 90% line.
When looking to register a new domain name, it is important to find a name that is pronounceable and catchy. Gone are the days of keyword-rich domain names - not only does
Legal Liability
More than ever, registrars of new domains have been caught in legal troubles after having stepped on other trademarks. Before registering a domain, it’s important to crosscheck your company name across the Internet to make sure no one else has used that name. Afterward, make sure that your name is also available across social media, to give it maximum discoverability on
A tool like Knowem can help you search your name across 500 different social networking sites to see if it’s been taken by anyone else. Cybersquatters are also on the rise - they register pre-established domain names across different extensions to profit off of their traffic. In 2012, a report from the World Intellectual Property Organization revealed that trademark holders filed 2,884 cases of cybersquatting across 5,084 domains - a 4.5% increase from the previous year. Established companies should consider registering popular misspellings of their brand, as well as their domain name across different extensions to avoid cybersquatters.
Extensions/Domainability
While .com websites are still the gold standard of domain extensions, the landscape is changing with the emergence of generic top-level domains like; .travel, .buzz, and .xyz. Now, companies can use their extension to describe their services, add some personalization, and stand out in the industry with easy-to-remember URLs - for much less money than it would cost to open a .com domain.
We asked domain name broker Sharjil Saleem said, “Premium domains are still very important in establishing a brand. We are currently selling Halifax.com that is valuable to the town of Halifax and to the UK company named Halifax. Users searching for either are much more likely to click on and visit Halifax.com than the-town-of-halifax.zyx.”
For many companies, choosing a name and the domain is the first step towards building their brand. Be sure to keep these factors in mind when taking that first step!
