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| Tech Update |
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A crash course in e-commerce
The basic toolkit: Choosing and obtaining a domain name
By Eamonn Sullivan
E-Business
April 10, 2001
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Whether you plan on signing up for a free storefront or plan on doing everything yourself, you will need one or more of the following items in this toolkit. For example, most banks will require that you get a special Internet Merchant Account, regardless of whether you handle transactions yourself or someone handles them for you. While most hosting organizations will provide lots of assistance for most of this, we'll provide more information for those planning on rolling their own.
Six years ago, who would have thought that Amazon would be a good brand name for selling books? Or that Monster would make people think about finding a new job? In hindsight, making such bizarre choices looks like a stroke of genius. If Amazon had chosen something book-related, the company would have been constrained in what products it could offer. If Monster.com had chosen something job-related, it would have sunk below the waves of hundreds of job-related sites that have come and gone since.
Choosing a domain name, then, is important not only for the business now, but for where you plan on taking it in a few years' time.
Most businesses have two choices: use their existing business or brand name or create an entirely new one for the online venture. Which you choose depends on what you plan to do with the online business. On the Web, it is much easier to expand a business in new directions, as Amazon has shown, because you are essentially a catalog. | [an error occurred while processing this directive] |
Unfortunately, just about every word in the dictionary is already taken, so you are a bit constrained in your choice. That may change in the next couple of years as the domain name system is revamped and there are more domains to choose from. In November, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers approved seven new top-level domains, including .biz and .pro. The new system also provides a better, or at least more comprehensive, domain name resolution procedure, which will help many businesses that find that someone else registered a trademark before they had a chance to.
The. com domain is likely to remain the center of action for a while longer, however. Many businesses get around the problem by making up words, using hyphenated combinations or combining names and numbers -- furniture4you.com, for example. But the combinations are shrinking by the hour. Not only does someone have furniture4you.com, but they also have furniture4yourhome.com, furniture4youonline.com and officefurniture4you.com. Nor are you guaranteed success if you want to register in another domain -- furniture4you.net and furniture4you.org are also taken.
Fortunately, choosing a domain name and registering it is much easier than it was a few years ago. Just go to www.whois.org and play around with different combinations until you have found one that is free. Then, shop around for a registrar. Sites such as www.easyspace.com can get you registered quickly and can easily get your existing domain linked to the new one.
A word of caution: Before settling on a domain name, ensure that your choice doesn't infringe on anyone's trademark. Otherwise, you could face a protracted legal battle later and lose the money and effort you put into the domain name. Search the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office's trademark database first.
 Choose a domain name that describes what you do now, but leaves room for growth later.
Use www.whois.org to check availability.
If the domain name you want is available, don't waste time. Register it now, even if you don't plan to be online for a year or more.
Shop around for the best deal from registrars.
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