If you want to sell online, you want customers to come to your website to add products to your shopping cart. This means you need your own internet address - and easy to remember name which will make customers come back to your website.

The correct name for such an Internet address is Domain Name.

A Domain name is a Web site address that belongs to you exclusively. It is your ‘domain’ and may even contain your own name, such as www.shopfactory.com. No one else can use it. It’s like your own street address.

However unlike a street address a domain name can move with you. So if you decide to switch your web hosting company or ISP, you can take the name with you. This means even if you move, your customers do not have to learn a new address for you.

Your Domain Name should closely reflect your business name or what your business is about, to make it easy to remember. Your Web site address should also always stay the same - so customers can always find you again.

Unfortunately finding such a Domain Name may not be easy, as many names have already been taken up. Nevertheless, the shorter and easier to remember or the more closely the name reflects your actual business name, the better. Also ideally avoid words which could easily be misspelled.

There are also many new extensions to domain names, such as net, org, biz and info, tv and of course the main country extension of your country. Nevertheless today the .com or the main extension used in your country are still most highly regarded among customers. The new European extension .eu is also shaping up to be an interesting alternative to companies doing business in Europe.

When an ISP gives you a free domain name, it is usually not a proper domain name, but an internet address address based on their own domain name - such as www.my-ISP.com/homepages/SteffanKlein.

This is not really your domain name - it is just a website address based on their own domain name. If you move on, you must give it up. Which means you have become dependent on the ISP to maintain your shop address.  

Proper domain names also allow you to have your own email addresses, making you independent in this regard, too - and look more professional.

It is not hard to get a domain name nor very expensive. Ask your ISP or Web-hosting company to help you. Just make sure they list you, not themselves, as the owner of the name. Because if you do not own the name yourself, moving it from one provider to another can become a serious problem.