In Web hosting and online business setup, domain name selection is the first hurdle to surmount. You cannot afford to go wrong with your domain name because it plays a very vital role in your online business success. It can even become one of your trademarks, a part of your brand. Your domain name has commercial value which you can apply patent to. Choose your domain name wisely; invest time and business knowhow on it alone.

As far as letters, numbers, and hyphens, you can get creative with your domain name – just don’t place the hyphen at the start or at the end. You could not use special symbols and spaces in your domain name also. Excluding the domain extension (.com, .net, .org, etc.), you could have anything from 2 to 63 characters in your domain name, which is not case sensitive.

To get you started, here are some useful tips you can follow to craft your business' online identity.

1. Use your company's known/registered name as your domain name. It’s easier for people to remember or find you online if your URL is your company name itself. Intel, Microsoft, Del, etc. are easy to find on the Web because they use their registered name, the name known to everybody, as their website URL. It’s a known fact that at least 90% of people who are not sure about the company’s website just type the company name in the address bar followed by .com. Thus, brings us to the next useful tip when formulating your online address.

2. Choose the .com extension for your URL. Since it's one of the first extension created for domain names, people are hotwired to type .com after a domain name on the address bar. You yourself know this all too well by now. For online business purposes, it's absurd to choose other extension if you can get the .com. However, there are instances wherein you can use other extension for your online business domain name also.

For instance, if your range of business is country specific, you can choose the extension assigned to your country like .us, http://.co.uk, .au, etc. This is the best alternative after the .com extension. Moreover, you have to know that the .org extension is used for noncommercial websites.

3. Be a step ahead against your competitors by using your company's name as domain name. When you shall have developed your brand later, or you have a well developed brand to begin with, many of your competitors will ride on your success by closely imitating your company's name as their domain name. Don’t give them this luxury by using your own name in your URL itself. It’s better to be clever right from the get go than pursue intellectual or patent rights in the future.

You might think that these tips are ordinary, but you don’t want to dismiss these if you want to succeed in your online business down to your domain name.