⚡ In short
A domain is your address, and changing it later is expensive. Take a short name you can say out loud without spelling it, check availability before you fall in love with an idea, and register it in your own name rather than your contractor's. Price runs from about ten dollars a year depending on the extension.
You buy a domain once and live with it for years. Changing it later is possible, but it costs you search rankings, breaks old links and reprints your business cards.
How to choose a domain name
One rule covers most of it: the domain has to survive a phone call. If you find yourself spelling it out letter by letter or explaining where the hyphen goes, something is wrong.
What works against you: hyphens, numbers, doubled letters where two words meet, and any spelling a person could guess three different ways. They will guess wrong and land on someone else's site.
Length matters less than people think. Longer and obvious beats short and cryptic.
Which extension to take
.com is still the default, and there is a practical reason: people type it out of habit even when you tell them otherwise. If your audience is global, take it.
Country zones make sense when your customers are local. They tell Google where your business operates, which helps in local results.
Themed extensions like .studio, .shop or .tech look fresh, and picking the best domain extension here is mostly about your audience. Keep in mind the habit problem above: if you take one, having the matching .com redirect to it saves you lost visitors.
How to check if a domain is available
Any registrar's search box answers is domain available in a second, and whois services show who owns a taken one. Do this before you get attached to a name.
If your first choice is gone, resist adding a number or a hyphen. Try a different word or a different extension instead. A domain with a "1" stuck on the end reads as the backup option, because that is exactly what it is.
Check the name on social platforms too. A site under one handle and an Instagram under another is friction your customer does not need.
Need a website along with the domain?
We will help you pick the name, check availability and register it in your own name.
How to register a domain name and what it costs
To register a domain name you need an account with a registrar, the owner's details and a payment. It takes about ten minutes, and the domain starts working immediately or within a few hours.
Prices depend on the extension. A .com runs roughly ten to fifteen dollars a year. Country zones vary. Themed extensions can be cheaper or several times more expensive, and some raise the price sharply on renewal — check the second-year cost, not just the first.
The mistake people make most: register the domain in your own name. If a contractor does it on their account, the domain is legally theirs. When you part ways, getting your address back becomes a negotiation.
A few more domain name tips
Turn on auto-renewal. An expired domain goes on sale, and automated services grab decent ones within minutes of release.
If you are short on domain name ideas, start from what people already call you rather than from a clever abstraction. The name your clients say out loud is usually the right one.