You may take your time to find the perfect domain. Make yourself comfortable. Relax, read our seven tips and let our domain check inspire you:
After all, it’s about the figurehead of your website.
Table of contents
An apt, descriptive and catchy web address is crucial to the success of your website. We have seven tips for your perfect domain check.
- What does a web address consist of?
- Tip 1: Memorable and easy to write.
- Tip 2: No hyphens, numbers, umlauts
- Tip 3: Let the domain speak for itself
- Tip 4: Fantasy or proper names
- Tip 5: Legal protection
- TIp 6: Perform a domain check
- Tip 7: Find the perfect domain extension
What does a web address consist of?
To find the perfect domain, we first look at the elements of a domain or web address.
A domain always consists of at least two parts: The second level domain (helloly) and the top level domain (.com) helloly.com
This domain sounds familiar, but it is still missing a crucial detail: We are used to domains being preceded by a world-famous subdomain www
This part of the domain, sometimes also called the third level domain, is what makes it catchy to our ears www-dot-helloly-dot-com – that’s catchy!
This completes the classic domain, consisting of
- Subdomain
- Second level domain and
- Top Level Domain.
A web address also consists of the protocol that comes before the domain. Everyone knows this, but nobody speaks it https://www.helloly.com
The Hyper Text Transfer Protocol, or http for short, is used for websites. This is also available in a secure, SSL-encrypted version: Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure, for short: https
Tip 1: Memorable and easy to write
The perfect domain is like a catchy tune: once it’s in your head, you can’t get it out. But what makes a domain stand out?
It’s Short
Think about whether you can shorten the name of your website, company or project. For example, Property Management Berlin could become the much catchier domain pmberlin.de. In comparison, www.propertymanagementberlin.de is tedious and cumbersome.
Easy to remember
The ideal domain is easy to pronounce and easy to spell. Therefore, avoid words that are often misspelled.
Also pay attention to the sound of your domain. Some word combinations sound bumpy, others resonate with a certain melody. Repeat your domain creations over and over again.
Avoid foreign and technical words in your domain. These can be misunderstood or misspelled. Unless you are specifically addressing a specialist audience with your website.
Tip 2: No hyphens, numbers, umlauts
The KISS principle also applies to domains: Keep it short and simple.
Do the domain check: Most well-known websites do not use hyphens, numbers and/or umlauts.
Hyphen
Hyphens are unattractive because they always have to be mentioned separately in domains. Consequently, it is easy to forget them. In fact, the hyphen usually only comes to mind when the desired domain is no longer available without a hyphen. However, there are now hundreds of domain endings. This makes the detour via the hyphen obsolete once and for all.
Figures
Numbers are also anything but easy: Should you write them out? Or enter them as numerical values? If it’s an English domain, do you pronounce the number in German? Or in English? Will my counterpart understand?
To emphasize the round-the-clock philosophy in online business, some companies place the number 24 in their domain. Sounds kind of cheap. Don’t you agree?
Umlauts
For a long time, they were not even possible. And now that they are possible, they are actually impractical. We are talking about umlaut domains.
They sound tempting for German-speaking companies: domains with ä ü and ö instead of ae ue and oe. But this is where the problems begin.
First of all, people are not used to entering a domain with an umlaut. Many people don’t even know that umlauts are permitted at all.
When I hear the web address of a cheese dairy, I instinctively assume that I should change the umlaut A to ae. I then write Kaeserei instead of Käserei. If this cheese dairy used an umlaut domain, it would have to be mentioned separately. Cumbersome.
Finally, probably the biggest disadvantage: only a handful of the Internet community can do anything with umlauts.
Tip 3: Let the domain speak for itself
“Happy”, “Thriller” and “Ghostbusters” say it all: Oftentimes, just one word really is enough.
There are words that say it all in one fell swoop. For the perfect domain, these words are worth their weight in gold. With the domain www.dustbuster.at, you don’t have to think twice about what is on offer.
The domain www.tradefair.cologne also leaves no questions unanswered. Here it is as clear as day what the website offers us: Informations about trade fairs in Cologne.
The clever combination of second level domain and top level domain results in web addresses that immediately convey to visitors what they can expect from website.
Tip 4: Fantasy or proper names
A fantasy or proper name stands out. At the same time, it makes your website unique. And protectable under trademark law.
When George Eastman founded the Kodak brand, he was the first to choose a purely artificial name. Eastman had good reasons for this:
- Kodak was conspicuous. Also because the letter K is rare in English.
- Kodak was easy to pronounce in many languages.
- The term had no negative connotations in any language.
- It was easy to remember.
The fantasy name Kodak therefore fulfills all the criteria required for a perfect domain. However, one shortcoming remains:
The trademark does not allow any conclusions to be drawn about the industry or field of activity. However, this connection can be established with the appropriate top level domain such as .photography, .photo or .camera.
Tip 5: Legal protection
Domain check trademark law: A short search costs nothing and saves a lot.
If you have a domain in mind, we recommend that you carry out a trademark search at the patent office. This is done in just a few minutes and gives you a good feeling when registering your domain.
On the subject of “Legal protection”, we also recommend the article “Legal considerations when registering a domain name.
Tip 6: Perform a domain check
With our domain check, the search for the perfect domain becomes an exciting pleasure.
Search over 500 domain endings with one search query.
Tip 7: Find the perfect domain extension
A domain that fits perfectly: Over 500 domain endings create countless possibilities for individual, attractive branding.
A brief insight into the current domain endings.
Use the richness of current domain endings to find the perfect web address for your website. Remember: If the domain ending and the content of the website match, this makes it much easier for visitors to categorize your site. Search engines also rate this positively.
You may also be interested in the following article:
Domain unavailable? The best .com alternatives0 (0)
The most popular top level domain still remains .com. This means that many popular addresses are already taken. We show you the best .com alternatives.
