One of the first things to consider before building a website is to think of a good domain name.
Similar to the company name of your business, your domain name will become your basis which you will build the brand of your website upon.
Having a great domain name make a big difference in helping your website flourish.
In this article I will outline some important considerations when it comes to selecting a good domain name.

1. If you have a company or a product and already has a name for it, you would normally want to use your company or product name as your domain name.
   If you are just starting a business and do not have a company name yet, you may want to first check if the company name that you want has a corresponding domain available, if your company name is different from your domain name, your customers may stumble onto the website of a different company when they try to find you on the Internet.
   
2. Your domain name should be short and easy to pronounce.
   Just imagine if you have to verbally tell someone your website address, you want people to be able to easily remember and spell out your domain name correctly.
   
3. If you are building a specific company brand, you may want to use that brand as your domain name even if it doesn't really convey what your business is about (yahoo.
   com, google.
   com are some examples).
   Otherwise it is always recommended that you include some descriptive keywords related to your business in the domain name.
   In other words, make sure it is clear from the domain what your site would be about.
   This will make it easier for your site to appear in search engine results when people search for your brand or site using keywords.
   
4. Do not use hyphens in your domain name.
   Consider for an example if you used the domain name "domain-name.
   com", over time as your site gets popular and well known, people will just try to access your site by typing "domainname.
   com", and of course they will not be reaching your site.
   At that point either you will have to buy the other domain name without the hyphen to gain back your lost traffic, or that domain will already have been brought and you will lose that traffic and potential sales.
   
5. Use a.
   com domain extension if you can, unless you have specific reasons to use other extensions.
   However usually a.
   com extension is the cheapest and the most common extension for businesses.
   

Of course the above are only general recommended guidelines.
Your site can grow and flourish even if you broke every single one of the above suggestions, as there are always special cases and sometimes even miracles.
You can always change your domain name later if you need to, and you can still retain your existing traffic by using URL redirection techniques.