How to Choose the Best Domain Name for an Online Store

This is the Equid eCommerce Show with your host Jesse Ness along with Richard Ote. Hey Richie, back again. I know you're excited about this one because I know you have a little bit of the same addiction I have and it's an addiction for domains. How many domains do you own right now?

Just shy of 30 probably right now. You're down from where I would have guessed. I thought you had more from our previous conversations. Personally, I'm down.

I think I have like under five right now. And I usually had about 10 with different registrars. I'm all about domains, even though I'm kind of down now to like under five, but you know. Been in the hundreds.

So it's down for me too, but not that low. Yeah. So for us, this conversation is like obvious. You should have a domain.

What do you mean by domain? We've done this for so long. Let's keep it basic. What exactly are we referring to?

Yeah. So a domain is the internet address, right? Like normally that would be a.com.

So google.com is a domain, facebook.com, right? Equid.

com, lightspeedhq.com. So basically all the internet addresses, they're getting a little more wild. There's .

edu.net, a lot of .ios out there and people are kind of playing around with the other top level domains when the dot-coms are taken, which is pretty common. So really kind of speaking to the people on this show that for some reason just didn't buy a domain in the past.

I guess I'll just say, hey, here's the announcement. We have domains available inside the control panel right now. So shout out to our product team and our developers. I know this was kind of a bear of a project, I guess.

It was painful, but it's there, it's available, and it's super easy. So we just want to make sure we have domains. They're available. You can buy them.

They're in the range of like basically $15 to $20, which is a pretty standard price for domains. So if you haven't been doing it, let's talk about domains and why should you do it? Real quick, before we dive too deep into that, to your point of their internet address, unlike a regular address where it's 2325 Main Street and it happens to be the place you live, you get to choose this address and you get to pick the name that fits. So when you're referring to someone might not be using a domain, there's a name sitting there, but it's not necessarily the name that you chose.

It's whatever. There's various different versions out there. Company.site.

Let's dive into that. For some of the longtime Equid customers, you'd be like, I don't know, I have a domain. And yes, you do. So if you started right now and you didn't want to pay for domain, you want to upgrade, you would have your store name.

company.site. So that's like a perfectly acceptable name. It works.

You can put it into a browser bar and it will get to your store So you can choose that store name It has to be available of course it Previously we had some variations Might been a subdomain or we had equid.com forward slash your store name would have been your URL. Now, most people in the past would have bought a domain elsewhere and then you point your store to that domain. And I don't wanna bore everybody, but like there's DNS records and there's all sorts of like backends to registrars that can be a little bit daunting for somebody that's never done it before.

Rich, you've owned domains. You get it. I've pointed these, played around with those records. Basically, you don't want to mess around too much.

You want to follow directions closely and then get out of there. Because unlike the house at that 2325 Main Street or whatever, you're going to be able to find the house because you know the general area. Internet, you're not finding that thing if you don't have that right address. One digit off.

Yeah, you put a dot in the wrong spot. You put NS1 instead of NS3 dot whatever. It won't work. Sorry for interrupting you, but it's perfect timing.

I was going to jump in on what you said earlier. You said it was rather daunting project. To be clear for the listeners, it was a daunting project because of what we're talking about right now and Ecwid wanting to make it easy for the end user. It's not daunting to buy a domain.

It's daunting for Ecwid slash Lightspeed because now they just buy the domain, basically say they want this for the store and Ecwid's going to take care of all that. Yeah. For the end users, if you haven't purchased a domain before and you've been a little bit afraid of you go to GoDaddy, Namecheap, whatever, one of the registrars, you can get lost there. I fully get it.

There's lots of upsells, lots of options. And then you've got to figure out how to connect that domain to your store. A lot of people have done that. Great.

You're good. You've already done it. You don't need to mess around. For the rest of people listening, if you haven't done that before and you've been a little afraid, this is honestly the simplest way I've seen to buy a domain.

There's a couple of ways to get there. Let's just say you go through settings, go to domains, and then you just start searching for a name that you want. It'll search and show you the different URLs. So like, let's say I want to type in Jesse's store.

I'm going to get Jesse's store, search in there. Maybe there's a .com available. And then there's the other options, .

nets, .xyz, .store, .shop.

There's many different options for that. And then you enter your credit card, push purchase, and then we set up everything for you. You don't have to worry about it. If you type that into the browser bar, that's your new store name done.

The hardest part is not getting lost in thinking too long on what that name should be. Yeah. That's going to be harder than getting it done. Once you decide, hey, this is going to just be the name and you just go with it.

There's enough things to worry about in the business. Very true. Let's help people out as they're searching. What do you look for in a domain?

You're always going to have to make choices. So like if you sell cars and you're like, I put in cars and cars.com is taken. Well, yeah, of course it's taken.

So it's cars.net, all the obvious ones, right? So you want to have as short a name as possible, as memorable a name as possible hopefully descriptive And ideally it a it my personal opinion But then everything beyond that is some sort of choice So Rich knowing that you have to make choices where do you compromise? Do you compromise first on going to a .

net or .store, or do you add another word to it like jessyshop sandiego.com? Oh, that's available.

Okay. It's a great question. So if you have a brand already, the obvious one is name it what your brand is, if it's available. That to me would be the most obvious one.

Now it's a little different based on how you asked me the question, like how I would, but I'm not collecting hundreds of businesses. These are names that I might turn into something later or someone else might want them and you can flip it or this or that. So that's slightly different, but based on what's useful for this lister, I would say step one would be name it your brand if it's available. I'm assuming it's not available, right?

Like yourbrandname.com is not available, right? Okay. Well, used cars first.

So I was like, okay, Jesse's shop store is not a good one either. You want your brand in there, but like, can you have it a shortened version, a longer version? And when do you look at the other URLs? So I would say in this scenario, knowing we're trying to build an e-commerce store, I would likely look for other words that describe or maybe niche me down.

Still want to keep it short. So this one would obviously be gone too. But to your point of, say, location, maybe Art Shop is the name of your store and Art Shop is gone. So you just call it Art Shop San Diego.

I'm like you. If the dot com is available, it's the most common for a company. So definitely get that one first. I would never get a dot gov or dot org or edu, maybe a dot net.

But even then, I have a little mix on this because I think a bunch of people are mostly just clicking on links anyway. That's why I like the keyword thing, something that might get a hook for them to remember if they need to type it in. I'm with you for sure. It's always a dot com is preferred, but once you're on like your fifth word and then it's a dot com, oh man, it's really going to be hard to remember.

So I'd rather have easier to remember like a two or three words phrase and a dot net maybe. Actually, I'm seeing dot shop and dot store being quite a bit more common, particularly in e-com. Let's be honest, if you're listening, you're probably opening up a store. So .

store, .shop are, I think, reasonable alternatives. Would I prefer a .com?

Yes, for sure. But if that's not available, .store, .shop, not bad.

The .io is usually more tech company. So those are options there. I'm willing to play with the wording as well, like maybe jessyshopinc.

com. If you have to add a phrase in there to get a .com, I'm open to that. But you do want to think about it being memorable.

Do you want to include a keyword of your top product? Potentially. It kind of depends. So like if you're starting out fresh, kind of the world is your oyster Do you want to have a memorable brand or do you want to include a top keyword in there And the keyword is not just for SEO purposes it also to be memorable So you got a guitar Rich guitars dot whatever Maybe that's memorable instead of like Rich's shop.

A few ideas to think about there. Yeah. I wouldn't think too long about these again, just enough that you gave it thought and you started moving forward because there's so many things to work on in a business. I think it's about getting to work on the stuff that matters and picking something that describes you as best you think it can now that's available and don't let the friction get any harder than that.

And then let Eckwood set it up for you and you're good to go. Yeah, Rich, I think that's good advice. We went a little deep there on the different options and yeah, go deep. But if you've been searching for names for two hours and you're confused, take a break.

It's too long. Go back to the one that you liked earlier and pick it and be done. You can always change that later. So yeah, spend a little time, but don't get too stuck there.

I would also mention too, there's a beta tool out there. We have like an AI tool where you can plug in the types of products you have, the location, and we have some AI that will help generate a URL idea. And then you can kind of go from there. So that's available in the control panel.

I will not say it's available to everybody right now, but that's out there. You may want to look at are the social profiles available too. If you think this is going to be big on TikTok or big on Instagram, check that that handle is available. So just some ideas out there.

Again, getting back to like, don't spend forever on this. Like it's important, but it's more important to get your site live, to get up and going, to get your first sale, to keep momentum going. So hopefully that's helpful. You should buy a domain.

Like don't think that the cost is too prohibitive. Most domains are going to be in the $15, $16 range. You should be able to get that on one sale. I'm certain that over the long haul of a year, many years, a domain is going to make you look so much more professional, more visible to Google.

It's mostly about looking professional, looking like a legitimate site. So don't skip the domain. It's really not that much. You should get a domain, period.

It's super simple. And again, just the one-stop shop, Equid style. Yeah, so the domain's available in the control panel. It's super easy.

It's gonna be in the 15 to $20 range, depending on the exact URL you choose. Richie, any last thoughts, questions on this? No, I just love. Equid's making it easier all the time.

Something that someone should have done anyway, but now it's a no-brainer. If you haven't done it yet, get in there, buy the name, let Equid set it up for you. Done deal, 15, 20 bucks. It's literally no-brainer.

Yeah, guys, this one's easy. We don't need a recap on this one. Go buy a domain. You know what to do.

Go out there, make it happen. Bye-bye. Thank you.