The selection process of your domain name can be significantly more efficient and quicker if you carefully identify and take into consideration all specific attributes of your online business. What makes your online business different? What is your competitive edge? What are your long term directions? What is the theme of your website? And so on. Once you have clarified all key characteristics of your business model, you will be able to better select names that reflect these attributes and be more decisive. We used the same process while selecting "DomainsIllustrated.com".

It is not uncommon for online companies to use a number of different domain names all pointing to the same website. This is due to the fact that domain names can have various functionalities and by using multiple domain names, a website will be marketed and exposed from every possible angle. We have classified domain names into specific categories, which are listed and explained below. When evaluating domain names for your online business, full awareness of the following strategies will help you make a much more informed decision.

A domain name can be selected strictly for the purpose of creating a new and unique brand that a company wishes to introduce to the market and promote. Quite often, this type of domain name is used as the main address of the targeted website. Some examples would be "amazon.com", "excite.com", and "onvia.com". As you can see, these domain names may or may not have any particular meaning as long as they are simple and unique.

In addition to their main website address, companies may also register a domain name that reflects their business slogan. This type of domain name is usually long but easy to spell. A good example would be , "WhereDoYouWantToGoToday.com" which is a domain name for a slogan that "Microsoft" uses in its advertisements, and as you can guess, it is a domain name that goes to the company's main website "Microsoft.com". Ownership of this type of domain name has two main benefits: First, it protects your company's slogan and saves you from future legal battles with those who might go ahead and register your trademarked slogan before you do. Second, it allows your website to receive walk-in traffic by many curious Internet users, who will type your slogan in their browser in order to find out where it goes.

This type of domain name is usually stuffed with keywords which are often separated by hyphens and used to create better search engine rankings. For instance, a business whose target market is "computer buyers" might register "computer-computer-computer.com" with hopes of ranking much higher in the search engines if the keyword computer is entered. (By the way, this domain name is already taken by "computerhouse.com".) Note that the effectiveness of this strategy is highly debated and questionable. For latest discussions on this topic visit "www.SearchEngineWatch.com".

These are usually one word domain names that are very scarce and companies have paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to acquire them from their previous owners. The reason why these types of names are valuable are quite simple - instant traffic! Many Internet users, when searching for a particular business, will try to guess domain names that relate to what they are looking for. For example, it is quite natural for many people, who are looking for a loan, to type "www.loans.com" in the address bar of their internet browser. Surely, a company that provides loan services would highly benefit from this volume of highly targeted walk-in traffic. That is why "Loans.com" was purchased for $3 million by an established company that already had other domain names!

This is a domain name that is similar to a company's business name or product name. For instance, it is apparent that "IBM.com" should lead visitors to IBM's website. Furthermore, the company protects its name from use by others and reinforce IBM's brand through its domain name.

Domain names may also be used to address individual departments or services as separate business entities. For example "www.att.com" leads to AT&T's main website where as "www.attwireless.com" points to the companies wireless services.

This type of domain name is used for competitive and marketing reasons and is often used to identify the industry that a company is focusing on. This is not a domain name that a company would use as its main website address. As an example, let's take "WirelessDataCommunication.com", which is currently featured in the Showcase section. This domain name is based on a term that is often used to identify the wireless industry; a highly competitive sector. Naturally, any company that is focused on being a strong participant of this industry, would gain a competitive advantage through the use and strategic marketing of this domain name.

Mistyping of domain names by customers and potential visitors occurs on a regular basis. In order to avoid any loss of potential traffic due to errors, online businesses often purchase a variety of domain names that are common miss-spelled versions of their original domain name. In addition, this strategy also protects the company from certain parties that take advantage of miss-spelled situations and use domain names that are very close to the domain names of other companies in order to draw traffic to their own sites. Here are a couple of examples of two popular websites who have registered miss-spelled versions of their domain names: "Yahooo.com" registered by Yahoo! and "wwwetrade.com" registered by eTrade.

Many domain registries now allow domain buyers to register domain names up to 63 characters long.

ThatMeansWebsitesCanHaveDomainNamesWhichAreAsLongAsThisSentence.com !

So where do you draw the line? Should you settle for a longer domain name with a small registration fee or should you go for a short name that requires large amounts of investment? Obviously, the shorter and simpler you domain names, the easier it would be for visitors to access your website. However, this issue is often looked at as a black and white scenario and is not addressed correctly, specially from a marketing standpoint. Although a short name can be more effective than a longer one, there are many short names that are very hard to pronounce, spell, or remember! A company would benefit much more from a longer domain name that is easier to remember and spell as opposed to a complicated short name. For instance, we might have been able to obtain a name such as "domainz-4u.com" but we find our longer domain name, "Domainsillustrated.com" much more effective and marketable! Further more, purpose of a domain name (see purpose) should also be considered when evaluating the length. For example, you should always register your full company name, slogans and other important names, regardless of how long they might be.

It is very important that a domain name is easy to pronounce and sounds clear. This makes a significant difference in the effectiveness of 'Word of Mouth' advertising, 'Radio Ads', 'Television Ads' and many other situations where your domain name is 'vocally' mentioned. You will also need to consider your geographic target market as your domain name may not be as easy to pronounce for those countries that speak other languages than yours. Remember that Internet is a global medium and your site can be seen by any one, anywhere in the world.

Consider a situation where a reader comes across a company's domain name while flipping through a magazine. What is likelihood that the domain name will be remembered by that individual, if he or she wished to visit the site later at home or office. Make sure that your domain name is easy to remember, and easy to spell. Do not let potential customers have difficulty guessing the spelling of your domain name, as it happens with so many websites. Note that, in many cases, it is better to choose a longer domain name than a name that is short but difficult to spell.

A very unique and catchy domain name helps to distinguish your online business from those of the competition, especially in the Internet industry, where people are bombarded by companies advertising their domain names. Also, some companies use names that have a catchy angle to them so that they stay on people's minds! Here are some popular examples: Boo.com, Snap.com, Google.com, and Yahoo.com.

You may also have noticed that many online businesses, use generic names that have absolutely no meaning, such as "FogDog.com", "Onvia.com", and "Xemex.com". This would be a good strategy for overcoming the fact that the majority of English words that do have a meaning are already taken. There is also another advantage for selecting a generic name that has no meaning or does not say anything about your business - expandability! For example, Amazon.com started by striving to be the biggest online book store but now the company is moving fast to becoming the online shopping center for just about everything - did they invest in a good expandable domain name? Absolutely!

Be careful about using certain characters such as hyphens (-), numbers and letters that sound like words (such as U for YOU). There are many websites that use such domain names either, because they were not able to find the domain they were looking for, or they found them interesting. However, in many cases these names may have negative marketing effects. Remember that your domain name should be simple enough that, when mentioned, there would be no confusions about its spelling.

As you may be well aware of, when it comes to selecting domain name extensions (TLDs), ".com" is considered the most valuable and globally recognized TLD. Internet users, particularly in North America, assume a company's domain name ends with a ".com" and is what they type first when they are trying to find a company's website. However, there are many other TLDs that may be more appropriate for your website. For example, ".org" is often used for non-profit organizations. There are also many online business that register their selected domain name is all possible TLDs to protect their name from use by others.