Naming Our Website

Finding a URL—or website name—was one of the first tasks we faced in getting started with the construction of our Internet website. We wanted a name that would be easy to remember, so we thought simply using our physical shop’s name would be best. However, when electing a name, you must follow certain conventions (such as that you can not have any spaces in the URL) and you need to check that no one else have registered the name you want to use. Also you have to decide on which top-level domain to use, which is indicated by the letters following the dot in all URLs.

For our name we settled on LadyBug-Shop because it was an easy to read version of our shop’s name. (Some experts advise against using a hyphen in URLs, but we think it makes the name easier to read.) And we chose the “.com” domain because it is by far the most popular domain for commercial websites. (Other possible extensions for business sites are .biz or .net. Government websites use the .gov extension, non-commercial organizations such as non-profits use the .org extension, and educational institutions use the .edu extension.)

It should be noted that while we like to display our URL using upper and lower case letters, when typing the name in a search engine, capitalization does not matter. You get the same result whether you type LadyBug-Shop.com, http://ladybug-shop.com/, LADYBUG-SHOP.com, or even lAdybUG-sHOP.com!

After selecting a name, we had to find out if it was available or if someone else had already taken it. Luckily the name we wanted was available. But as millions of domain names have been registered—many just to place a claim on them for potential future use or for resale—it can be difficult sometimes to find a good name for a new business. We were fortunate. You can use websites such as http://www.who.is/ to find out if a particular URL is available.

The next step was to formally register the name, which also required paying a small fee. Registering a .com domain name currently costs about $20 to $60 per year, depending on which company you use. Check around and you can usually get a big discount, especially for the first year. Also, registering .biz and .net domain names is somewhat less expensive. The registration process can easily be completed on the Internet using any of a number of registration services such as http://www.name.com/ or http://www.godaddy.com/.

We completed all the above steps and on May 19, 2003 “www.LadyBug-Shop.com” was born!