What's in a Domain Name? - Company Business and Marketing

Home Office Computing, August, 2000 by William Van Winkle

Choose the right handle for your Web site

IF YOU'RE TRYING TO PROMOTE A SMALL e-commerce business in a big world, the right domain name is everything. Roses.com by any other name may not be the online shopper's obvious source for rose sales. Registering your domain name sounds easy enough: Pick a catchy name, register it with one of the domain vendors on the Web, and open your online doors.

But the reality of domain registration is more complicated; it's not just a matter of picking a name. You'll have to make sure the one you choose aptly represents your business--and isn't already taken.

Find a Name Say you run a small business specializing in roses and you want to register roses.com. First, you need to make sure the domain is available by running a Whois (www.whois.net) search from any domain registration site. One good place is InterNIC (www.internic.net), which managed all top-level domains (.com, .net, and .org) before control was passed to the Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN; www.icann.net).

If your top choices are already taken, head to Network Solutions Inc. (www.networksolutions.com), which registers about 80 percent of all domain names. The site offers MyNameFinder, which lets you input three keywords and receive available combinations of those words, with or without hyphens. Lucky you: rose-expert.net, rosesales.net, and rose-sales.com are available (or were at this writing).

If these names don't work, try the WhoisPlus (www.whoisplus.com) search at BuyDomains.com. WhoisPlus runs the same keyword combination searches as MyNameFinder, but integrates a formidable collection of Web-savvy buzzwords, yielding bestrose.com, premiumrose.com, roseuniverse.com, and many others.

Stake a Claim Once you've settled on a name, you'll need to buy and register it. BuyDomains.com charges $17 per year for a domain name registration; the company first purchases it from an ICANN-approved registrar, then sells it to you. (For a list of approved registrars, go to www.internic.net/alpha.html.)

Network Solutions charges an industry standard $35 per year. (ICANN registrars purchase top-level domains for $6 per name annually.) Why does one cost twice as much? When you register a domain name, the registrar requires a primary and secondary domain name server (DNS) address. Think of these as your virtual street addresses. When someone queries the central registry for your Web site, the registry must know where to direct the queries. Network Solutions charges $70 for a two-year registration, but this assumes that you already have DNS addresses to reference.

The company charges $119 for a two-year reservation, also called domain parking, which you'll need if you don't have DNS addresses. The vendor allocates a page on its server as a placeholder for your domain, often an "Under Construction" or "Future Home of YourNewDomain.com" message. "Reserving is like buying the piece of land on which you'll build a house" says Network Solutions senior public relations specialist Christina Binko.

Get the Perks Most companies offer other value-added services that might help you offset registration costs. These include e-mail and URL forwarding, and Web site creation and promotion tools. Some domain vendors provide one or more of these services for free; others charge a premium.

If you're not a do-it-yourselfer, the easiest option is to ask your Internet service provider (ISP) to register your domain. Because ISPs are typically responsible for generating the two DNS numbers, a service rep can forward these with your domain request and billing information. You'll likely be charged a $70 InterNIC fee, plus incidental setup charges.

To Master Your Domain ...

* Think of not only your company and industry names, but also the names of your products. If your breadwinner is the Super Gizmo, register supergizmo.com.

* Don't build your precious .corn domain into a success and Leave the name for others to capitalize on--register the .net and .org extensions white you're at it. And if you plan on marketing abroad, use a service like Network Solutions' idNames to secure foreign domain extensions as welt. Your supergizmo.com could become supergizmo.tw in Taiwan or supergizmo.co.uk in Great Britain.

* The current fad is to register under i-this and e-that, but does this describe your company or your products? If your operation doesn't fit into that mold, consider success stories like Amazon.com and Yahoo. Strong, memorable names backed by smart marketing can make all the difference.

* Register near-miss names such as super-gizmo.com or supergismo.com. Even one recovered sate from a near-miss can help recoup the extra registration expense.

* You can register domains for one to 10 years, so purchase with an eye on the long term. If you forget to pay your renewal bill on time, you'll need to reregister--unless someone has already beat you to it. Some domain vendors offer discounts if you register for extended periods.