Choosing a domain name that lasts
Extensions, length, spelling traps and the admin details people only learn the hard way.
A domain is the one branding decision that's genuinely hard to reverse, because every link, business card and email signature you ever create points at it. Ten minutes of thought now saves a migration later.
Length and sayability first
You will read this out on the phone hundreds of times. Aim for two words, under about fifteen characters, and no combination that creates an accidental second reading when the words run together.
The spelling traps
- Hyphens: people forget them, and you'll always be saying 'with a dash'.
- Numbers: is it 4 or four?
- Dropped vowels: cute in a logo, painful in conversation.
- Doubled letters where two words meet.
- Homophones — anything you'd need to spell twice.
Extensions in 2026
A .com is still the default people type, and a strong country extension like .co.uk is equally trusted locally. Newer extensions are fine when the whole name reads as one phrase, but avoid ones associated with spam, and never build on a free subdomain you don't control.
Check before you commit
- Trademark register in your market.
- Social handles — matching ones are worth a compromise on the domain.
- Search the name to see who else owns that word.
- Domain history, in case it was previously used for something penalised.
The admin nobody warns you about
Register it in your own name, not your web developer's. Turn on auto-renew and registrar lock, keep the contact email on a different domain so a lapse can't lock you out, and pay for privacy so your home address isn't public. Expired domains are the quiet way small businesses lose their entire online presence.
Buy the obvious defence, skip the rest
Get the singular and plural, and the local extension if you're not on .com. You don't need thirty variants; you need one address people can remember and a renewal date you can't miss.