An attractive domain name is not just an address to your business website; it is often the first impression of your brand that your customers will have. Unfortunately, you really only get one chance to get it right (unless you want to spend thousands of dollars and countless hours on updating and re-building your SEO).

To avoid losing your brand or search ranking by having to change your domain name later down the road, we have shortlisted several key tips to get you going in the process of formulating the best domain name for your business as well as analysing its potential performance with real testers.

Perfecting your domain name

1. Ensure that it is unique to your brand

For your domain name to stand out and get recognised, it should only represent your brand, and most importantly not be confused with any other existing websites.

As such, a comprehensive web research before you register your domain name is highly recommended in order to prevent yourself from selecting one that is similar to what other businesses in your market are already using, and ultimately avoid unnecessary trademark infringement or other legal issues.

2. Make your domain name easy to remember

While it is crucial to have a unique domain name, it should be simple to pronounce and spell. It is important to remember that your brand could also be spread through word of mouth, and that people would naturally be able to recall names that are easy to process when hearing it in person.

Choosing a domain name that can be easily misspelled could result in losing a lot of potential traffic, as people often will not have the time or patience to carry out multiple Google searches to identify the right website.

3. Keep it short, and avoid using hyphens or double letters

Another way to ensure that your domain name is fit to build the necessary traffic is to avoid using long names, which increases the risk of your visitors misspelling it while looking for your website.

Of course, balance is key when it comes to length. Most domain names are kept under 15 characters or approximately two to three words, but they should also not be too short. You could use an acronym, however this is only recommended if the public will refer to your business regularly using the initials in your URL. An example of this is BBC or IBM.

In addition, the usage of hyphens and double letters in your domain names should also be avoided in order to prevent typos from being entered.

4. Pick a TLD/domain name extension that suits your business

A domain name extension or top-level domain (TLD) comes after your website name, and forms the last part of your URL like .com or .org. The dot-com extension is undoubtedly the most common, making up about a third of all registered domains today (according to Domain Name Stat).

However, this means that getting an available .com extension for a short domain name can be challenging, due to the existing volume. As such, you could benefit from also using a combination of keywords targeted to your business to create a unique domain name in order to pair with the .com extension.

Otherwise, there are many other new extensions available today which could be relevant to your business, such as:

• .biz: commerce or business activities
• .co: acronym for corporation or company
• .app: application developers or builders
• .net: Internet service providers, digital infrastructure etc.
• .photography: photography studios, print shops etc.

Apart from the above domain extensions, you could also choose to go with location-based extensions, such as .us for the United States or .nz for New Zealand. However, this should be used with caution as some might require your business to actually be located in those countries.

5. Create a short list of potential domain names

When creating any type of new concepts, it can be all too easy to simply proceed with your personal favourite, and inadvertently disregard any suitable alternatives that could perform better for your business in the long run.

Therefore, in the process of crafting an eye-catching domain name, it might be worth keeping all the possible options that you have come up with in a list, instead of tunnel visioning on one that only personally appeals to you.

Testing your domain name for traffic-building potential

Now that you have a list of attractive potential domain names, what should you do next? How do you determine which would perform better in driving traffic to your website and increasing the conversion rate of your visitors?

To help you identify your winning domain name, Conjointly now offers the Domain Name Test. The Domain Name Test allows you to simply and efficiently gather feedback from 100 testers to determine the best domain name for your brand. The domain name test includes:

• Finding the best domain name for your website.
• Comparing respondent attitude to each domain name.
• Benchmarking domain names against good performers.
• Receiving feedback regarding what consumers liked or disliked about your domain name.

As the competition to buy an attractive domain name is ever intense, it is imperative to act fast and register your chosen domain name as soon as possible. Fortunately, one of the key benefits of the Conjointly Domain Name Test is that at an affordable price of about USD 289, its high efficiency of analysis could provide you with actionable, data-driven results within just an hour.

Need help on getting useful insights for your domain name selection? Start below: