Selecting e-commerce domain names

Just over half of small business owners are now doing business online, and aspiring and new entrepreneurs who are looking to start an e-commerce business must pick a powerful domain name from the start.

VeriSign’s 2020 Domain Name Industry brief reported 366.3 million domain names were registered across top-level domains (TLDs) by the close of Q4 of 2020. Domain name registrations have grown by 4 million year-over-year, according to the brief.

Let’s first define what is means to have a domain name; then, we will review some of the best strategies for creating a memorable one and learn about registration.

A domain name is the name of a company’s website. For example, take our business name: MyCorporation. This is the name of our business, and it’s also our domain name. You can type “MyCorporation” into a search engine and find our website.

Our business domain also has a dot-com (.com) at the end of its URL address. This is a domain name extension. Many businesses will choose a dot-com extension, as these tend to be the most popular and recognizable. However, every e-commerce business is different. It may not always be in a company’s best interest to use a dot-com extension. Some may choose to use another option, such as dot-co (.co), dot-us (.us), or dot-biz (.biz) depending on their offerings and services.

E-commerce businesses rely heavily on the internet to build, engage with and retain a customer base. When possible, it is helpful for an e-commerce business to make its domain name an exact match to the business name. What if this isn’t possible or ultimately not useful in finding the business?

An e-commerce business may utilize basic strategies that are helpful for naming a business as they figure out their domain name.

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