I had been thinking about writing this article for a while, when a conversation with a friend over dinner reminded me of the importance of this subject.

 

He was talking about the company he works for; they had just merged two sister companies into one and commissioned a consultant to come up with a new and dynamic name. The consultant came up with a name and the merger went ahead, it was only after all the legal stuff that someone then went to buy the new domain name. It was discovered that both the “.com” & “.co.uk” extensions had been taken. They were left with a problem; they could either spend a lot of money on changing the company name again or abbreviating /extending their new dynamic name in order to able to get a domain name. In the end they abbreviated the domain name.

 

This the brings me to the point of this article, when starting a new company or venture do you choose the official legal name first and then worry about the domain name or visa versa?

 

It used to be the case when starting a new company that you would check with your countries register and if a name was available you would register it and that would be that. It would not matter if someone in Australia or Outer Mongolia had a company with the same name, but in today’s world where national boundaries are transparent and everyone is using and trying to sell in the same virtual space the competition for domain names is fierce.

 

In fact it is nearly always the case that unless you think outside the box when choosing a name you will have difficulty in finding a free domain.

 

It is also important to remember that your official legal name does not have to be the same as your domain name. For example if you chosen domain name “acme” was available but there was a dormant company registered called “acme”, there is no reason why you could not change your legal name and just trade as “acme”.

From personal experience in setting up over 50 companies and websites and comments from other people in the industry you should always start with choosing a domain name first, making sure that both the “.com” and your country specific extension are available. It is only at this point that you should then check with your countries company registrar. This is because there is a now a much higher chance of a company registration being available then a domain.