Domain Names

... and how to choose them.

If you really want a presence on the Internet you'll have to have a good domain name for your website. Good domain names are important. It has to directly reflect what you do or what you have to offer as a product or service.

If it is a non-commercial website you intend to develop, such as one based on your interests, your hobbies, skills, family or whatever, then your own name will probably be fine for a website (if the name is still available - check first). But if it's for a business, a description of the business (e.g. LocaltownPrinters.com) would be better than a personal name, or the name of the business itself if it was long-established (e.g. J. A. Smith & Sons, Printers). Try turning THAT into a domain name: you'd end up with something like www.jasmithandsonsprinters.com. Not exactly memorable.

You could always capitalize the initial letters of each word (JASmithAndSonsPrinters.com), but who would remember that? Existing customers? Perhaps. But the real question is: would it be the natural thing to do to type that into a web browser in order to find a printing business in your town? Probably not. LocaltownPrinters.com is much more memorable. It also has a certain authority to it: you suddenly are THE local printing firm in that town: wherever possible, think generic (possibly with local connotations if you're providing a local product or service) rather than specific to an existing traditional name. (Although, of course, the business name may well have started off as Localtown Printers sixty years ago - so that's fine; it'll be well-known and memorable.)

There was a short boom in the domain names trade in 1998-1999. Simply by owning good domain names it was assumed you could trade it with someone else who wanted it more than you did, and for a lot of money. The world responded to the wake-up call when Business.com was sold for $8.5m. All of a sudden everyone and his dog was registering imaginative domain names for the sole purpose of trying to sell them on. Suffice it to say that kind of activity has all but dried up; domain names, by and large, are now only registered for the purpose of building a website.

Domain Name Registration

Who do you register your domain names with? The world governing body of Internet domain names is ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers). There are a lot of good "third party registrars" who will register domain names for you; they are actually brokers, and will register domain names on your behalf with the prescribed registrars for the particular type of name (for the .com, the .net and the .org names the registrar is Internic; for the .co.uk names and all other UK names the registrar is Nominet UK). A list of accredited registrars is available on the ICANN website. Click below to see if your chosen domain names are available, and to register them. This is the website of 1&1, which combines excellent value with high standards of service. With 1&1 you can register your domains as well as host the web sites themselves. Their system is very easy and intuitive to use, prices are highly competitive and both telephone and email support is good.

These pages are designed for worldwide consumption, but we don't have room to provide links for every country! You can use 1&1 if you are resident in north America or the UK, but maybe you are further afield. For a registrar closer to home click here for Internic's listing of registrars which, for convenience, is an alphabetical listing by country. Time zones and optimum availability of service from helplines often go together. Just a thought.

Value of Domain Names

As with any other commodity, a domain name ultimately is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it. Having stated this, there are several factors which positively or negatively affect the potential value of domain names. As the best domain names are spoken for, the price can be determined by how badly the buyer wants to buy and how badly the seller wants to sell. The second way to determine how much domain names are worth are the present or potential uses. A domain such as Windowcleaner.com is worth less than Dentist.com, the primary reason being that, since dentists can profit more from a good site, they should have to pay more for a good name than a windowcleaner. If your site is called JoeBloggs.com it will be worth less than Stockbroker.com. The more generic the better.

To learn more about domain names read our ebook.

Click Here to make this your Home Page

Contact Us:

Our Group company Inteltab can be reached by post at:

Inteltab
Suite 323
258 Belsize Road
London NW6 4BT
United Kingdom
email: support @ inteltab.com

Tel. +44 (0) 208 421 3194
Fax. +44 (0) 208 428 8280

Help File