How to Choose a Domain Name You Will Not Regret

Your domain is the address you will read out on the phone, print on a van, and hand to customers on a card for the next decade. The best ones are boring in the most useful way: short, obvious, and easy to spell without repeating yourself.

Your business name is almost always the right starting point. If it is taken, try adding your city or your trade rather than inventing a strange spelling. Customers who half-remember your name will guess the plain version, not the clever one.

Avoid hyphens, doubled letters, and numbers. Every one of them turns into a conversation — is that with a dash, is that the numeral — and you will have that conversation hundreds of times.

Stick with a .com when you reasonably can. People type it by reflex, and alternatives still get mistyped into .com by a meaningful share of visitors. Regional extensions can work well for a business that is unmistakably local.

Say it out loud before you buy. Read it to someone who has never seen it written and ask them to type it. If they hesitate or ask you to repeat it, pick something else.

Once you have it, keep it in your own name and set it to renew automatically. A lapsed domain takes your website, your email, and any search rankings you built with it — and getting it back is often expensive or impossible.