Do I need a domain name before I get a website?

You can start without one. Any decent build process will work on a temporary address and point the real domain at it before launch.

But it is worth sorting first, for one practical reason: it is the step most likely to add a fortnight to a two-day project.

Why it delays things

Domains are usually bought once, years ago, in a hurry, by whoever was handy. Then they are forgotten until the day somebody needs to change where the site points.

At that moment you discover the domain is registered to a former employee, or the web designer from 2016, or an email address at a provider that no longer exists. Recovering it involves identity checks, waiting, and occasionally a payment to someone who has no obligation to help you.

Meanwhile the finished website sits there, unable to go live at the address printed on your van.

Buy it yourself, in your own name

The rule is short. Your business is the registrant. Your email is the contact. You have the login.

An agency can manage it, point it, and renew it. They should not own it. This is not about trusting them, it is about what happens when they stop trading, get bought, or simply stop answering. The domain is the one part of your online presence that cannot be rebuilt from scratch, because it is the address everything else refers to.

Registering it takes about five minutes and costs a few pounds a year. Buy it before you commission anything.

Choosing one

.co.uk if you trade in Britain. It reads as local, which is an advantage for a business serving a local area. Nobody in the UK thinks less of a .co.uk.

.com if you sell beyond Britain, or if the .co.uk is taken. If both are available and cheap, take both and point one at the other.

Avoid the novelty endings for a small local business, unless the name genuinely works with one. Some of them still trip people up when read aloud, and a domain has to survive being said down a phone in a noisy van.

Keep it short and sayable. The real test is not how it looks, it is whether a customer can hear it once and type it correctly. Hyphens and numbers fail that test badly: "smith-and-sons-plumbing-24.co.uk" is a sentence, not an address.

Do not stuff it with keywords. "birmingham-cheap-emergency-plumber.co.uk" was a tactic that stopped working a long time ago, and now mostly signals a business that is trying too hard.

Practical things that catch people out

Turn auto-renew on. An expired domain is a website that vanishes, an email that bounces, and, if you leave it long enough, a name somebody else can buy. It happens to real businesses every week.

Use an email address that will outlive the person who set it up. Not the office manager's personal Gmail.

Note when it expires, and where it is registered, somewhere other than that registrar's own account. When you cannot get in, that is the information you need.

Buy the obvious misspelling if it is cheap and your name invites one, and redirect it.

If your domain is already somewhere awkward

If it is registered to an old supplier, deal with it now rather than at launch. Politely ask for the transfer authorisation code and move it to a registrar you control. Most suppliers hand it over without fuss.

If they will not, or cannot be reached, there are routes through the registrar and, for .uk domains, through Nominet's dispute process. It is slower and more irritating than doing it in advance, which is the whole argument for doing it in advance. The mechanics are in how to transfer a domain.

The short version

Buy the domain yourself, today, in your business's name, with auto-renew on. Then it is never the thing standing between a finished website and a live one, and it is never leverage in somebody else's hands.