How to Purchase a Domain Name for a Website: A Guide for Businesses

If you’re reading this, chances are you’ve started a business and you need a website. You may have even hired a website designer to design and build your site for you. Exciting! But it’s important to know how to purchase a domain name for a website before you get started. 

As a business owner, it’s crucial that you purchase your own domain name rather than have your designer purchase it for you. This is because you’ll want to own your domain name yourself so that you have complete control over it if and when you want to change designers or website platforms in the future. So today we’re going over everything you need to know about purchasing a domain name for your business. 

When to Purchase a Domain Name for Your Business

Let’s dive in. The first thing to know is at what point in the process you should buy your domain. Our advice? Right away! Once you’ve decided on a business name, go ahead and secure the domain for it. Don’t wait, otherwise, you risk someone else purchasing it before you have a chance to. 

And even worse – once you begin a domain name search, if you don’t make the purchase immediately, bots can scan domain searches, purchase the domain you were looking for, and try to resell it to you at a higher price. It’s unfortunate, but this is a reality in the online world. 

Where to Purchase a Domain

When you’re ready, you’ll purchase your domain from a Domain Registrar. There are tons of them out there though, so it can get really overwhelming to try to understand which one to use. 

We have been designing websites since 2014 so we’ve done plenty of research over the years and have landed on a few favorites: GoDaddy or NameCheap. We highly recommend one of the two! 

With GoDaddy, you can invite your web designer to access your domain without having to share your password, which is a nice feature. To do that you’ll simply follow these steps. This allows for easy connection of your DNS settings when it’s time to launch your site. 

But a heads up – don’t let GoDaddy trick you into buying things that you don’t need. We recommend only purchasing the domain name and privacy protection. You don’t need to pay for hosting or email. There’s an easier way to create a custom email domain through Google Workspace, which we went over in detail in this post. And if you plan on having your website on a platform like Showit, you’ll pay for your hosting through them.  

How to Purchase a Domain Name for Your Business

Buying a domain name is way easier and far less techy than you probably think. You’ll just go to the Domain Registrar’s website (again, either GoDaddy or NameCheap), and type the name that you’re looking for into their search bar. Take a look at the available options, select the one that’s perfect for you, and move forward with purchasing. 

FYI – the Domain Registrar will show you all of the available options, not just the .com option. However, we highly recommend choosing a .com option rather than .co or any of the new options like .business, .designer, .realtor, etc. This gives your business more credibility and improves your website’s likelihood of getting found. 

And that’s it! All you’ll need to do is provide your designer with your domain information when it comes time to launch your new website. You’ll be prompted to renew your domain each year after that, but that’s often something that you can set up to be done automatically on your business credit card. (If you don’t have a business credit card already, we highly recommend Chase Ink Business Unlimited.)  

Looking for a Showit Web Designer?

Now that you know how to purchase a domain name for a website, are you looking for a web designer to help you build your site? We’ve got you! We offer brand and web design services for ambitious entrepreneurs just like yourself. 

Starting and growing your business should be exciting and fun – and we’re here to help! Let’s design a website that helps you stand out from the crowd and books your dream clients.

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