How to choose a web address you won't have to change later

Your web address is the one part of a website you can settle before anything else exists. Not the logo, not the photos, not what goes on the second page. The name people type.

It is also one of the few things that becomes painful to change, because by then it is on the van, the till receipt, the email signature and the link in your Instagram bio.

Here is how to get it right in one sitting.

You rent it, you do not buy it

A domain name is not something you own forever. You pay a registrar for the right to use it for a year or more, then you renew. If the renewal lapses, the name can pass to someone else, including someone who noticed what you built on it.

So the boring first step matters: register it somewhere you will still be able to log into in three years, keep those account details where you keep your bank logins, and put the renewal date in your calendar the day you register.

There are more than two thousand registrars accredited to sell domain names, and ICANN publishes the list. If a company is not on it, you have no registrar to complain to when something goes wrong.

The phone test

Read your candidate name to someone who has not seen it and ask them to type it into their phone. If you have to spell it twice, it will cost you customers for as long as the site exists.

That is what kills the clever options. Two words that sound like one word get split. A number in place of a word gets heard three ways. A hyphen is spoken as "dash" and typed as nothing. A bakery that writes itself as "Loaf and Ladle" will be typed as loafandladle, loaf-ladle and loafandeladle by three different people, and only one of them arrives.

A name that survives the phone test is usually the plain one: your business name, spelled normally, with nothing bolted on for effect.

Short beats descriptive

Web addresses are not case sensitive, and the part before the ending can only contain letters, numbers and hyphens, with a hyphen not allowed at either end. So "Best Bread And Cakes Northside" has to become something like bestbreadandcakesnorthside, which nobody types twice and fewer remember.

Two or three short words is plenty. What you sell belongs on the page, not jammed into the address. If someone needs the address to understand the business, the page is doing too little work.

The ending carries rules

Endings are not decoration. The general ones, like .com, .org and .net, do not require anything of you. Country endings such as .uk or .us can come with conditions about where you are or what language the site is written in, and some endings are reserved: government bodies for one, schools and universities for another.

Read the rules for any ending before you fall for it. A cheap novelty ending is only a bargain if you would say it out loud to a customer without wincing.

If your first choice is taken, do not rescue it with a hyphen or a number. Pick a different name. A web address with a hyphen in it is one you will spend years explaining.

Look at what gets attached to it

Registering a domain means handing over identifying contact details: name, postal address, email and phone number. That information forms a registration record, and ICANN runs a public lookup tool for those records.

Before you fill in the form, look up a domain you already know to see what a record shows, and read what privacy option your registrar offers. Then decide what you are willing to attach to the name. Do not put down an address you would rather keep off the web.

Where it will actually end up

Print your favourite candidate before you commit. Say it in a voicemail: "Find us at ...". Put it in the Instagram bio line. Write it on an envelope. If any of those feels clumsy, the name is not finished yet.

The ten-minute test

Run these over your best candidate before you pay:

• Say it once to a stranger and ask them to type it without help.
• Look at it written down: any digit, hyphen or doubled letter that could be misheard?
• Would it still work if someone only heard it once in a noisy room?
• Is the ending one you would use in conversation, and do its rules fit you?
• Is the registrar on ICANN's accredited list, and what privacy does it offer?
• Diary the renewal date twice: the day you register, and the year after.

None of that needs a designer or a developer. It is half an hour with a notepad and an annual renewal afterwards, and every printed thing that follows depends on it.

Sitewright is still being built, so there is nothing to sign up for today. The waitlist on the home page is the only thing that is open, and it is where you will hear when there is something to try. If that sounds useful, you can join the waitlist.