Choosing the right domain name for your website is very important, whether you have an established business or are just starting out. Your domain name can make or break your success online; a good domain name allows your visitors to quickly recognise your business and understand the purpose of your site, as well as helping them to visit you again.

- Make sure you choose something memorable: unless your advertising budget is very generous, you probably won't have the funds to launch a huge branding campaign, so a descriptive domain name is probably the way to go.

- A descriptive domain name should accurately and specifically describe what your business sells or does. You'll get more targeted traffic (visitors who are actually interested in your site) if your domain name closely reflects what you stand for.

- Your domain name should be easy to say over the telephone. Hyphens can make it more difficult to understand, but you should register hyphenated and unhyphenated versions just in case. Try not to use words that sound like numbers, are difficult to spell, or that can be spelled in more than one way.

- Names which start with letters that occur early in the alphabet, or numbers, will be listed higher in directories. Don't compromise on meaning, though.

- Short names are generally easier for your visitors to remember and are less likely to be mistyped, but an eight letter single word is much better a random string of five letters – use your common sense.

By Natalie Catchpole