How to choose the best domain name for your purposes

The choice of your domain name and its extension is an essential element of your on-line marketing. A powerful, well-aimed name may generate considerable traffic on your site.

Here's a few pointers on how to create the ideal domain name for you and your company.

1. Choosing the extension
2. Choosing the name
3. Naming rules
4. The desired domain is not available. What now?
   

1. Choosing the extension

You can choose among 2 types of extensions: those connected to a country (e.g. .ch or .li) or those with international appeal (.com, .net, .info, etc.).

A .ch will do if you operate on the national market or if your site strongly identifies with Switzerland. A .ch puts you on a “first-name basis” with your national visitors.

A .com may be necessary from a certain level of importance on or if you intend to become known outside of Switzerland as well. To be more precise, choose a:

.com if your site is mainly commercially oriented
.org if your site represents an organization (often charitable)
.net if your site is concerned with the Internet
.info if your site has been created for information purposes
.biz if your site deals with business matters.

2. Choosing the name

Your name should be easy to memorize and your potential visitors should be able to find your address intuitively.

- The shorter the name, the better: The ideal name should not be more than 10 characters long.
- The key is simplicity: If possible, avoid hyphenation and compounds.
- Choose a name which represents you: e.g. mycompany.ch or myproduct.com.

But be careful: When choosing your domain name, make sure you don't infringe on any trademark rights, copyrights or other intellectual property rights.

3. Naming rules:

Your domain name must contain the following rules :

- Your name must be between 3 and 24 characters long.
- Permissible characters are: the letters of the alphabet, numerals and the hyphen “-”. All other characters, e.g. “/”, “,” or “?”, are excluded.
- Blanks are not permissible.
- Your name does not have to be made up of numerals exclusively.
- There is no distinction between upper and lower case (i.e. names are not case-sensitive).
- Abbreviations may be used.

4. The desired domain is not available. What now?

Each day applications for thousands of new domain names are posted. If the name of your choice has already been taken:

a. Act quickly and check whether it is still available with a different extension.

b. Try synonyms, add-remove hyphens, etc.

c. If you are the owner of a trademark or a product whose corresponding domain name has already been reserved by a third party, you can lodge a complaint with one of the courts of arbitration which ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigner Names and Numbers) has approved, e.g. with WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization), on the Web at www.wipo.ch