Business Names vs Site Names

[thehomebody77]

Hi everyone,

I'm in the process of getting an online business going. Could anyone help me out with the issue of business names and site or store names. I am extremely new to this, and I'm not sure if the name I register my business under needs to be reflected in the name of the store I'm opening, or if I can register my business then name my online store separately. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[joeroxx]

Your main corporate site should have the same name as your company, or should be readily identifiable with your company. Two examples from here in the US are JCPenney, a department store, and Barnes & Noble, a bookstore. Their websites, respectively, are jcp.com and bn.com. If you have only one site, the same rule applies. Some people will tell you to name your website based on the keywords you want to be ranked for for SEO purposes, but I would not recommend playing those kind of games.

[pandaa]

If it was up to me, I would register the domain first, and then decide a business name to go along with it. The Internet is a valuable tool, and you're going to want to make sure you get a .com domain.

[surge]

I don't think that it is mandatory to have a same website domain name as that of your business name. Business or a company name can be longer so you can have a short version of it or its abbreviation as the website domain name. Also it depends on the domain availability. The domain you selected for your website may not be available but not because that the business or a company name is already registered, but because the domain is simply parked and kept unused . I registered a business last year and it was really tough to think about a business name along with my two partners. Then we made a domain name out of the business name.