Wiley Website Design and Development: 100 Questions to Ask Before Building a Website 978-0-470-88952-7 User Manual
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978-0-470-88952-7
1 . H AV E YO U T H O U G H T O F A G O O D D O M A I N N A M E FO R YO U R W E B S I T E ?
3
memorability. If your company name is four words long, it will be easy
to remember a domain name that matches those four words exactly.
You can also help visitors remember a longer name by capitalizing
words in print (
HealthWiseFitnessEquipment.com
) or using diff erent
colors for the parts of the name.
If You Don’t Have an Offl ine Name
For some businesses, deciding on a company name is one and the same
with choosing a domain name. In most situations it’s best to fi nd a name
that describes what you do. If your business is fi tness equipment, try to
get those terms in the domain name.
It’s also possible to choose an unrelated but catchy or distinctive
name. Take the thousands of social media startup companies on the
Internet, for example, with names such as Squidoo, Ning, and Reddit.
They’re trying to follow in the footsteps of online giants such as Ama-
zon and Google, which have shown that an unusual domain name can
be turned into a household word (with a lot of hard work and heavy
marketing)
Before fi nishing your list, you need to consider whether it would be
good to have multiple domain names for your website—the topic of the
next question.
Registering
vs. Owning
You often see
domains written as
www
.mydomain.com
, but the
www is not actually part
of the domain name.
Increasingly you’ll see
URL’s without the www
but check with your host
to see if your account
is confi gured to accept
either version. If it’s not
and you leave off the
www, your site won’t
come up.
Related Questions
2. Do you need multiple domain names?
Q
Page 4
3. How much should you pay for a domain?
Q
Page 6
Action Item
Draw up a list of as many good primary domain names as you can think of and rank them in
Q
order of desirability. You want to be sure to have plenty of alternatives if the ones you really want
aren’t available.
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