How To Register A Domain Name

Do yourself a favour. If you want to be taken seriously by wholesale makeup suppliers as well as your customers, think of a good name for your beauty business and use it from the outset.

One of the first things you do should be to register your domain name so that you can use your business name as your email address, and also so that it is reserved if you ever want to start your own cosmetics website in the future.

Domain names are not expensive and can be bought for less than £1, but it depends what extension you get (.com, .co.uk, .org etc). Many domain snobs would say that .com extensions are the best (they are also usually the most expensive) but for local Google search purposes there is also a good argument for using the country extension for where your website is based (usually the country where you live). For a beauty website you will not go far wrong with either of the above choices.

To register your domain name, there are loads of domain registrar companies to choose from. I personally like GoDaddy. They are a global organisation with local GoDaddy sites in most countries. I find their prices are very competitive and I have never had any problems with them. Their domain registration process is easy to understand and you can set up your domain name and email address in under 10 minutes. The process at GoDaddy is described below:

Go to GoDaddy.com, click on the Products tab and use the search box near the top right for the domain name that you would like for your cosmetics business e.g. mybeautybusiness.co.uk. If you are dead set on a name and it is already taken, try using hypens e.g. my-beauty-business.co.uk. For Google search purposes, the hypens are ignored, so if someone types in your website name they should still find you on Google.

When you find the domain name you are happy with, add to your basket and click on the “Continue to Registration” button. At this point GoDaddy will probably offer you special savings if you buy more than one domain name – just choose “No Thanks” to get to the next screen. You will then need to register your details with GoDaddy for your account.

The next steps will let you choose how long you want to register your domain for. There is a minimum period of 2 years for a .co.uk domain, and 1 year for .com. Select the minimum registration period, and the Uncertified option next to that. You can ignore the bit about hosting for now. On the next screen, stay with the default standard option (there is an option to upgrade to business registration, but that costs extra and is really not necessary).

On the next screen, you can choose your email options – up to 5 email addresses is enough. Do not select any hosting plan as all you want for now is the domain name. If you want a website later, you can add hosting then.

Click on to your shopping basket, and voila you’re done. The total cost for a .co.uk domain name, for 2 years, with GoDaddy is currently around £13.

To set up your email address and use your new email account, follow the instructions here. Then bookmark the login page so that you do not have to go through GoDaddy to access your email every time.

By the way, if you are in the UK, I would not recommend 123-reg.co.uk, as I had a bad experience with them a couple of years ago. I registered a domain name, and not long afterwards someone else’s site mysteriously appeared on my domain. I have no idea how that happened, but I wasn’t very happy about the ease of cybersquatting, and their customer service while I was trying to sort it out was rubbish.

Finally, by all means shop around, but beware of sites advertising super low prices, as often you may need to sign up for 5 or 10 years to get the price stated in the ad.

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