www.startingabusinessinBRITAIN.com

eBusiness: Domain names
A domain name identifies your business on the Internet. This is why it’s important to have a domain name in the form www.yourcompany.co.uk or www.yourcompany.com rather than www.webhost.com/~yourcompanyname. The latter is like using a "c/o" or "Care of ..." address on your letterhead - it doesn't look very professional!

The suffix (.co.uk or .com) is determined by where your name is registered.

Names registered with US agencies get a .com address. The reason there are so many of these (and why so many non-US web-sites have them) is that they are easy to get, with little formality beyond the credit card payment. The downside of this is that many names have already been acquired – some by people who plan to use them for their business, others by people who hope to sell them on to someone else at a profit (cyber-squatting).

UK domain names, distinguished by the .co.uk suffix, are registered through the ........

Just like a company name, a domain name must be distinctive and memorable. Ideally, it should be your business name but it could be a brand name or some other more general descriptive name.


Other eBusiness topics: