Your Business Website
Website Name:
The first step in building a website is fun – picking out a name for your business. Do you want the name of your city in your business name like Dallas Speedy Services? Atlanta Quick and Sure Delivery? If you want your business name to sound business-like it is preferable to not have your name in your business’ name. Compare John’s Delivery Service vs. Zoom Delivery. The 2nd sounds like a larger company – which is what you want your business to be – bigger.
Once you have come up with some ideas for names – ask other people: friends and family, which name (s) they think sounds the best.
You want your website name (domain name) to be short and simple – as easy to remember as possible. So even if your company name is longer – Fairfield Delivery Courier Service, try a shorter version for your website address like FairfieldDelivery.com.
Okay, now hopefully you have 3 – 4 possible names. The 2nd step is to see if those “names” are available for website.com names.
Registering Your Domain Name:
How do you check to see if your ideas for names are available for website names – that someone else doesn’t already have that website address you want? A website address is called a domain name. CBDriver.com is a domain name. Google.com is a domain name. And your website name will be your domain name.
You need to use a domain registering service to register your website name. Several we recommend are Google Domains, Namecheap, and GoDaddy. They are easy to use and the cost to register a domain name is inexpensive – averages between $9 – $13 per year.
I’ll use GoDaddy.com, a Domain Registration Company, as an example. On their home page, you will see a place where you can search to see if the name you want to register is available. You may find that website addresses ending in .com are not available while addresses ending in .net or .co are available. Finding a .com website name is preferable because it is easier for people to remember.
Enter the name you want and the search results will tell you if the name is available or taken, which means someone has already registered that name. If it is taken you will have to try your other name ideas until you find one that is available.
Once you find an available website name, you must register it. Once you register your name it is yours. No one else can use that web address. You will have the option to register for 1 year or longer. You will need to renew your name when the time period expires. We recommend you set up auto-renew so you don’t lose your website name by forgetting to renew and someone else comes in and takes it.
Our next article will be about how to build a website – so when someone types in your website name it takes potential customers to your business website.
