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Your domain name is the address people type to find you online. It shows up on your business cards, your van, your Instagram bio, everywhere. Get it right and nobody thinks twice about it. Get it wrong and you spend years explaining how to spell it.
The good news: choosing a domain isn't complicated once you know what actually matters. Here's what to focus on, in the order that matters most.
Start simple. If your business is called Maria's Bakery, try mariasbakery.com first. Customers already know your name — matching it online means they'll find you without any guesswork.
If the exact name is taken, don't panic. Add your city or a simple word: mariasbakerylyon.com or mariasbakeryfresh.com both work fine. Avoid adding random numbers or hyphens just to grab the .com — those are the first things people forget or mistype.
Here's a good test: say your domain to a friend and ask them to write it down without seeing it. If they get it wrong, it's too complicated.
Long names, double letters, and tricky spellings cause real problems. If your name is hard to spell even in normal conversation, that's exactly why you should keep the domain as close to it as possible, not add more complexity on top.
If you can get the .com version of your name, take it. It's still the ending people type automatically, especially older or less tech-savvy customers.
That said, endings like .fr, .shop, or .studio are perfectly fine too, especially if they make the name shorter or clearer. A bakery called lyon.bakery is memorable. A consultant called smithconsulting.co is clean and professional. Don't obsess over the ending — obsess over the name being easy to remember.
Domain names you choose today need to still make sense in five years. Skip trendy spellings like dropping vowels or adding "ly" or "io" just because they sound modern — they confuse people who are simply trying to type in your website.
Same goes for initials. Your team might know that JLM stands for something meaningful, but a stranger looking for a plumber has no idea what it means and won't remember it. Clear beats clever, every time, when it comes to domains.
Before you buy anything, say the domain out loud to a few people who don't know your business. Ask them to guess what you do and to try spelling it back. This five-minute test catches problems that are obvious once you hear them, but easy to miss when you're the one who came up with the name.
Also check it doesn't accidentally read badly when the words run together — a classic problem with names like "expertsexchange" or "penisland." Break it up mentally, word by word, before you lock it in.
Choosing the domain is genuinely the trickiest decision in setting up your online presence. Everything after that — building the actual site — should be the easy part, not another few weeks of stress.
That's exactly what Keepyz is for. Tell us about your business, and we build you a real, professional website in about 10 minutes, free, online right away at yourname.keepyz.com. Your own domain, when you want it, comes with Premium: €39 a year, plus the domain at cost with no markup. A .com is roughly €11 a year. Once you've picked a name you're happy with, come see how fast the rest can go.
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