Choosing your Business Name

Also read: Start Up Costs | Start Up Finance

The name you choose for your company is one of the most important decisions you will have to make. You will need the name to help sell your business; it will need to get your potential customers interested. The best thing to do is take your time in deciding the name and don’t rush into using one that maybe in the future you won’t think is quite right. First impressions are important after all.

You should think about what you want the name of your business to do, maybe you want it to reflect the service or products that your business is offering. Make sure that people can pronounce even spell your company’s name, it is always best not to use any embarrassing or inappropriate words or phrases as people won’t want to use them.

Maybe your business is best portrayed using a modern and innovative name.
If you should choose to offer your company’s services aboard you should make sure that your companies name is not insulting or means something rude or inappropriate in the countries relevant language.

Limited Company Names

Limited Companies have to be registered at Companies House. If you’ve decided to form a limited company you will need to make sure the name you have chosen is not offensive in any way and you should also check that it is not the same or could be considered to be too similar to a name that already exists.

Trademarks

You can find out whether your chosen name has already been registered as a trade mark by someone else by going to the Patent Office website. It is important to find this out as it could save you from any future trouble, you could be accused of trade mark infringement if you are using a name that someone else has registered as their trade mark. You can also check company names on the Companies House website.

You can use your own name to trade under; this might be helpful if you are a sole trader but again make sure that no one else is using it.

If you are going to be a Limited Company then you need to register with Companies House. Once your registration is complete you will receive a certificate of Incorporation, this will show your company’s name and its number. You can once registered go ahead and advertise your business. To make sure there is no confusion you should have your company name and address on all business correspondence, orders, invoices, letters ect. You could invest in having these details printed onto stationary or have some business cards printed.

Domain Names

Now that your business is registered you could have a website designed to help promote your business. You will need to have an address at which the website could be found, this address is known as the Domain Name. You can have a - .co.uk or .com domain name. For instance you would have – your business-name.co.uk or your business-name.com. If you are only going to be trading in the UK then the .co.uk would be sufficient or you could have both .co.uk and .com if you are going to be trading abroad.

Your email address is where people can contact you and it will normally include your domain name for example: you@business-name.co.uk. You can use numbers as well as letters in your domain name, if you wish to separate words then you can use hyphens but you cannot include spaces, fullstops or any other form of punctuation. You can check to see if the .co.uk domain name you have chosen is available by looking on Nominet, the official UK registry website for domain names, it is very easy to do. You will need to register your domain name with an agent. There are a lot of companies with which you can register your domain name and most offer hosting services too.