Choosing a domain name for your trade business

What the name actually has to do

A domain name has one job for a trade business, and it is not a marketing job. It is the thing you say at the end of a phone call, the thing painted on the van, the thing somebody writes on the back of a receipt in a bathroom showroom and types in three days later. It gets read once and recalled from memory.

So the test is not whether it sounds impressive. The test is whether a customer standing in a wet kitchen can hear it once, remember it that evening, and spell it right first time. Most names that fail, fail there — not on Google, but on the doorstep.

The domain also matters less for search rankings than people are told. There was a time when owning plumberleeds.co.uk gave you a lift in Google simply because the words matched what was typed. That effect was cut back years ago. What is on the page does the work now. The name is for people.

Note. Say the name out loud to someone who has never seen it written down, then ask them to type it. If they ask a question, pick a different name.

co.uk, com, or something else

For a business that works in one part of the UK, .co.uk is the right default. It reads as a British company to a British customer, it is what people half-expect when they hear a trade name, and it is usually cheaper to renew than a .com. Nobody in Bolton has ever declined to ring a roofer because the address ended in .co.uk.

A .com is not wrong. It is the global default, so it costs a bit more and the good ones went years ago. If your .co.uk is free and the .com is taken by a company in Ohio, take the .co.uk and stop thinking about it. If both are free and the budget stretches, own both and point one at the other.

The shorter .uk ending exists too, and it is fine, but people still type .co.uk out of habit. If you take a .uk, check who holds the matching .co.uk first, because half your customers will send their post there. Trade-specific endings — .plumbing, .roofing, .builders — are real and available, and they read as novel rather than trustworthy to an older customer. They also cost more every year, and you will spend the rest of your working life confirming that no, there is no dot co dot uk on the end.

Trade plus town, and the other shapes that work

There are really only three shapes of name that hold up over years, and every one of them is boring on purpose. Your surname with the trade attached. The trade with your town attached. Or a short made-up name you have already been trading under and people know you by.

Trade plus town is the most common because it matches how customers describe you to their neighbours — the electrician in Redditch, the gardener from Ashton. It is easy to say and it needs no explanation. The objection people raise is that it boxes you in if you expand. In practice that matters far less than it sounds: nobody in Wokingham refuses to ring readingelectrical.co.uk. If you already know you will cover a whole county, use the county, or use your name and leave the geography to the pages on the site.

Your own surname ages best. It survives moving town, changing what you specialise in, and taking on a second van. It also puts a person behind the business, which is most of what a customer is looking for when they are deciding whether to let you in the house.

• Surname plus trade — hartleyplumbing.co.uk. Ages well, travels well.
• Trade plus town — chesterroofing.co.uk. Matches how people describe you.
• Trading name you already use — the one on the van and the invoices.
• Two short real words — nothing invented, nothing that needs spelling.

Hyphens, numbers and how long is too long

A hyphen costs you something every time the name is spoken. Reading dash electrical is three extra syllables and a small question at the other end of the phone. Joined up is almost always better, and if the joined-up version is taken, that is usually a sign to change the name rather than to add punctuation to it.

There is one honest exception. Read the name joined up, in lowercase, as a stranger would — because two innocent words pushed together sometimes make a third one nobody intended, and you will notice it on the van before your customers do. If that happens, a hyphen is the smaller problem. Check first, then decide.

On length, roughly twenty characters is the ceiling and shorter is better. Two words, three at the outside. Fillers like the, and, ltd, services and solutions add length without adding anything a customer needs. Numbers are worse than hyphens, because a number has to be described — is that the digit four or f-o-u-r — every single time.

• No hyphens unless the joined-up version genuinely misreads.
• No digits, and no 4u, 2go or similar. They are ambiguous when spoken.
• Under about twenty characters, lowercase, two or three words.
• Nothing that needs an accent, an apostrophe or a spelling correction.
• Drop ltd, uk, services and solutions unless they earn their place.

The ones that cause trouble later

A few kinds of name look fine on the day and cost money afterwards. The expensive one is a name that leans on somebody else's brand — a national chain, a manufacturer, a franchise you are approved to fit for. Being an accredited installer does not give you the right to put the manufacturer's name in your domain, and if you are made to give it up you lose the signage, the stationery and the van livery with it.

The quiet one is a domain that has been registered before and dropped. Cheap, available, and sometimes carrying the history of whatever spam site sat on it in 2019. Before you buy anything that feels suspiciously available, search the name and have a look at the Internet Archive to see what used to be there.

The one that catches most people is not buying a domain at all. A free address on a website builder — yoursite.somebuilder.com — is not yours. You cannot take it with you and you cannot put a proper email address on it. A domain is under fifteen pounds a year, and it is the cheapest thing you will buy that has your name on it.

• A brand, chain or manufacturer name you do not own.
• A near-copy of a competitor working the same towns.
• Deliberate misspellings — they get typed correctly and land elsewhere.
• A dropped domain with a history you have not checked.
• A free subdomain on somebody else's platform. You are renting.

How to buy one, and what it really costs

You buy a domain from a registrar. You type the name, it tells you whether it is free, you pay for a year or several and it is yours for that period. The whole thing takes about ten minutes and there is nothing clever about it. Expect £8 to £15 a year for a .co.uk and £10 to £20 for a .com, paid yearly, forever.

Two things are worth watching at the checkout. The first is the offer price: plenty of registrars sell the first year at a pound and renew at thirty, so look at the renewal figure, not the one in the big type. The second is the pile of add-ons — SEO packages, hosting bundles, site builders, protection plans. You need the domain. Decline the rest and buy it later if you ever want it.

One more detail specific to UK domains. Nominet, which runs .uk, lets private individuals keep their address off the public record, but that opt-out is for people not using the domain for business. If you are trading, assume your registered address is visible to anyone who looks. Worth thinking about for ten seconds before you type your home address in.

Note. Register the domain in your own name or your company's, with your email as the contact — not your web designer's, not your nephew's. This is the single thing that goes wrong most often, and you only find out when you want to move and cannot.

The first hour after you own it

Turn auto-renew on and check the card on file has not expired. A lapsed domain is the worst afternoon in small business admin: the site goes dark, the email stops, and someone occasionally buys it while you are on a roof. There is a grace period on .co.uk, but it is not a plan.

Then put your email on it. info@yourname.co.uk on a quote reads differently to a Gmail address, and it costs somewhere around £5 to £7 a month per mailbox if you want a proper one. Most registrars will forward mail to your existing inbox for nothing if you are not ready to pay for that yet.

Then write the address down once, exactly as you will use it everywhere else — the van, the invoices, your Google Business Profile, the leaflet. Same spelling, same wording, every time.

Common questions

Should I buy the .com as well as the .co.uk?

Only if it is free and cheap. Buy the .co.uk as your real address, and if the .com happens to be available, take it and redirect it to the same site. If someone else already owns it, ignore it — a UK customer searching for a local trade will not end up there by accident.

Will putting my town in the domain help me rank on Google?

Barely, on its own. Google stopped rewarding exact-match domains a long time ago, and what counts now is the town written into the pages, your Google Business Profile and your reviews. A town in the domain helps people remember you, which is a good enough reason by itself.

Someone owns the name I want. Should I offer to buy it?

Usually not. Parked domains are often priced in the hundreds or thousands, and you are paying for a name nobody has heard of yet. Change one word, take the version you can register today, and spend the difference on photographs of your work.

My web designer registered my domain. Is that a problem?

It can be. Ask them to confirm the registrant is you or your company, not their agency, and that the contact email is yours. If they will not transfer it, that tells you something useful about what happens the day you want to move.

Can I change my domain later if I get it wrong?

Yes, and it is less painful than people fear — you buy the new one, point the site at it, and redirect the old address. The real cost is reprinting everything you have already put the old name on, so it is worth an extra day of thinking now.