The domain name of your website is unique and you should choose it carefully.
This is an important decision. Your domain name should incorporate the name of your business. Let’s take an example of a business called ‘Acme Tools’. If you used a space in a domain name then it would be replaced by %20 so ‘Acme Tools’ would look like ‘Acme%20Tools’.
So you need to replace the space with something easier to read like a hyphen or full stop e.g. acme-tools or acme.tools
Special Characters
If you have a special character in your business name then you have a problem. Take the & (ampersand) character for example. This is a reserved character and will be replaced with %26 when displayed in the browser address bar. Those reserved characters are $ & + , / : ; = ? @ so you want to avoid them in your domain name.
Domain Extensions
What about the domain extension? There is a lot to choose from: .co.uk .com .org .net .biz to list just a few. But here is something you need to know. When you register your domain name you must give your name, address, email and telephone number. This becomes public knowledge. Anyone can look up your domain name and then send you unsolicited mail. If you want to avoid that you can use a service called domain privacy but it is available only on certain extensions like .com. So choose your domain name carefully if you want to avoid a lot of spam.
Registering A Domain Name
OK, so once you have chosen your domain lets say acme-tools.com then you need to check its available and, if it is, register it. STOP. You need to read the post on hosting because most hosting companies will do the domain registration for you (and sometimes offer a discount for the first year). If you register your domain with an organisation then you won’t be able to move it to a different hosting company for 60 days. So select your hosting company first and then do the domain registration with them. will happily take care of this for you.
Conclusion
One last piece of advice. Most people don’t memorize domain names – they will type something into the address bar of their browser which will search for the closest match. So keep your domain name short (but ideally more than two or three characters) and unique.