Oh, my gosh, I love naming stores. It's like you get to create a brand out of thin air. That's exactly what you're going to do today for your store. You're not only going to name your store, but then you're going to buy a custom domain name so you can stick your place in the worldwide web. When's the last time you heard someone say worldwide web what's like Y2K? What is this? Call me biased, but I really love Oberlo business name generator.
It's actually, I'm serious. It's actually really great. So I'm going to leave a link to the business name generator below this lesson. So you can check it out yourself. This tool generates potential business names based on anything you put into the search box to get the most out of this tool, get creative with the words you're putting in the search box. Consider search terms, not only related to your products, but also your product category, maybe your customer's lifestyle or adjectives that describe the problem or the solution that your product solves. For example, for the bike accessories story that I'm building, I could enter something like bike, bicycle, commuting, cycling.
Any of those terms. Also, hot tip, you can search the same phrase twice with this business name generator, and you'll get a fresh set of results. As you find names that sound cool. Just write them down somewhere. You don't need to make any decisions yet. So you want to start collecting ideas. As I was using the Oberlo business name generator, I searched bicycle and I saw this name come up, black bear bicycle. And I loved it because black bear made me think of something kind of fresh and outdoorsy. And I loved the way it alliterated with three B words in a row.
I thought maybe this name is a little long, but let's start working with it. Once you have that short list of business names, your next step is to see if those business names are available as dot-coms. Now, the site that I really like to use for this is called namechck, it's name, check without the E I'll leave a link to it below. So you don't have to worry about spelling it. When you go to Namechck, enter the business name you're thinking of using. Now, remember don't put any spaces between the words because you're searching for this business name as a.com domain.
What's cool about Namechck is it will highlight in green, all the domains for which that business name is available, as well as tell you if that business name is available as a social handle on Facebook, Instagram, and other platforms. If you love a business name, but it's not available as a.com, you can also try adding one of these endings on it. Try adding words like store, market boutique, shop goods, provisions, crafts, fines.
The list goes on, get creative here. Just don't make your business name too long. And if you find a business name you love and it's not available as a.com, that's okay. I've seen a lot of entrepreneurs build great stores that are .co or .io, whatever you choose, you can make it work dotcom domains just tend to add a little bit more trustworthiness to a store. When I typed black bear bicycle into Namechck, I saw that it was available, but I just felt like that was a lot of syllables.
So I thought, Hmm. What about black bear bike shop that was available too? And I really liked the way that name is more compact and it makes it seem like I might sell things other than bicycles themselves. I know I won't be selling any bicycles on this store. So I like the fact that bike shop was a bit more all encompassing. Once you've decided on a store name, go back to Shopify and it's time to buy that domain name, log into Shopify, click online store, and then click domains, click buy new domain type in the domain that you love.
Click buy and fill out your credit card information. Once you've filled that out, click continue. And now you'll see a summary page. This is just confirming that you want to buy your domain and you do so click buy domain. Now you have your domain and all you have to do is verify it by going to your inbox and clicking the link that you'll receive there. A really cool thing too, is you instantly have these forwarding addresses. You can give customers these email addresses, and then when they email you using those addresses, it'll go to the inbox that you signed up for Shopify with.
If you haven't done it already, your homework is to find your business name. Once you've found your business name, claim it as a domain name on Shopify. And after you've done those steps, come back and meet me in the next lesson because that's when we'll go over creating a logo, no graphic design skills necessary.
