A leader in the creation of e-commerce sites, Shopify has experienced a meteoric expansion since 2006. It now offers many options and free or paid tools to make it easier to launch your online store. One of the favorite features of entrepreneurs is the purchase of shopify domain name. Here’s how does this simple and automated tool work?
What is the domain name?
The domain name is none other than the address of your website. It is unique on a global scale and makes it easy for your audience to find you. This is in a way the postal address of your website. The domain name is the following prefix “www.” (for “world wide web”). It consists of a character string and an extension (the Top Level Domain or TLD), for example “.fr”.
The domain name is essential when creating a website. However, the procedure to find a domain name is complicated because it must be unique on a global scale. It is therefore difficult to find a domain name that is both suitable for the name of your e-shop, but also royalty-free. This is a name that is not used by another site. The choice of the domain name is therefore a crucial step that can prove to be a real headache!
Once chosen, your free shopify domain name can be registered (paid procedure) in order to protect its rights. This protection gives you priority over that domain name. Your e-commerce site will then be hosted on this web address for the duration covered by the deposit.
How to choose the right shopify domain name?
As you will have understood, choosing your domain name is very delicate. Your web address will now be the business card of your website. The chosen domain name must therefore not only be unique and differentiable, but it must also reflect your activity. Said name must be consistent with the content of your website. It should also be memorable so that your visitors can easily remember it and access it directly, without having to search for the name beforehand.
Keep in mind that to boost your SEO and therefore increase your traffic to your online store, it can be strategic to integrate your main keyword into the URL of your site. The extension will also play a big role in the perceived quality of your site (“.fr” or “.com” being better perceived and memorized than “.org” or “.net”), and it will be necessary to take into account a possible internationalization of your activity.
Domaine shopify: Other criteria to consider
The stakes regarding the effect of the domain name on the influence of your online activities are considerable. You then understand that this is a decisive step in the process of putting your store online. For this, a preliminary work is necessary in order to retain the most relevant name that you would have wished.
Set the domain name: Prior work is useful
Before you start the actual search for the domain name with shopify, it’s important to sketch out a sketch on scrap paper. To guide your thoughts, the answer to certain questions is important.
- Would I like to have a particular keyword in my domain name? If so, which one?
- What are the qualifying adjectives that best appreciate my brand?
- What is the purpose of my brand?
- Which target of customers am I addressing?
- What are the provisions that help me withstand very likely competition?
The answer to these questions will allow you to find relevant ideas that will fit your activities. You will be able to stand out easily and make your products or services known.
Shopify domain: Find a suitable name
A domain name must meet a number of criteria that ensure its operationality. Among other things, it must reflect the image of the activity you are carrying out to make it easier for the user. This one should understand in a few seconds the essentials of the products or services that your store offers from your domain name on shopify. The name must be short and precise to promote its memorization.
In addition, the oral route is generally the one that ensures the popularization of the domain name. You need to take this into account when it comes to choosing the name. Choose a name that is easy to pronounce so that it can be used when communicating. As a result, you will need to avoid the presence of many dashes in your domain name. This considerably lightens its pronunciation and makes it pleasant to listen.
In addition, know that if a few years ago, inserting a keyword in the formulation of the domain name was a trend, today it is not at all. You may also get a counterproductive effect with this technique, especially with regard to natural referencing. In addition, focus primarily on the quality of your brand because SEO varies over time while the brand is definitive.
Buy a custom domain name with Shopify
True to its desire to simplify the lives of entrepreneurs, Shopify offers to help you buy and register your domain name. The creator of e-commerce sites thus provides you with several tools, such as its Domain Name Generator, a free domain name search tool allowing you to instantly check the availability of your domain name.
Thus, you just have to type in the search bar a keyword related to your activity (the name of your company, for example), and the system offers you a list of available domain names. This tool is therefore practical both to save you any tedious research on the availability of the chosen domain name, but also to give you ideas for domain names if the idea you had is taken and you are running out of inspiration.
Shopify offers you a variety of ideas, with many combinations among more than 50 extensions, and you are bound to find the ideal domain name for your online store. In addition to helping you find your domain name among the available Shopify domain names, Shopify offers you to register and register it in minutes through the site. Indeed, once your domain name is found, it is better not to wait before registering it because the competition is on a global scale!
Finally, Shopify also helps you manage your Shopify subdomains and redirects, which can come in handy when you decide to give your online store a facelift. You can also, thanks to Shopify and its features, remove subdomains that you no longer use and that could interfere with your SEO.
How do I connect an external domain name to my Shopify store?
The purpose of this part is to provide you with general instructions. This will set up an existing domain purchased by a third party on Shopify. You will find setup instructions for the most popular domain providers. But, we recommend purchasing your custom domain through Shopify if you want your setup to be made for you.
If you purchased your domain through a third party, then you’ll need to change your DNS settings and point your A record to Shopify’s IP address, and your CNAME record to “shops.myshopify.com.”
- Sign in to the account you have with your domain provider.
- Find your DNS settings. Look for your account admin panel, or your domain management zone, or DNS configuration, or similar.
- Change your A record to point to Shopify’s IP address.
The admin panel can have drop-down lists or editable fields where you can have to check boxes or edit a table. No matter how you interact with the administrator, you must do so:
- enter or choose the @ symbol, or a record
- Enter Shopify’s IP address as the destination for record A.
- Save record A (click Save, Save Zone File, Add Record, or similar).
- Find the CNAME record in your DNS settings.
- Edit your www CNAME record to point to the copy of shops.myshopify.com. This will redirect your customers to your store when they enter www before your domain name.
Often, you need to provide only the prefix without the period. But, for some domain providers, you need the entire subdomain. Use existing entries as a guide or follow your provider’s instructions.
CNAME records should always point to a domain name, never to an IP address. Save the CNAME record (usually by clicking Save or Add Record or similar).
Now you need to verify your connection in Shopify. Click Verify sign-in in your Shopify admin to confirm that your custom domain has been connected to your store.
It can take up to 48 hours for your custom domain to point to your Shopify store. If you have problems or need help setting up your third-party domain, you can contact your provider.
After you add your domain in Shopify, you’ll need to choose your primary domain (the domain name that customers will see in the address bar when they browse your online store). You can also set up an email redirect from the domain after adding it to Shopify.
Shopify Domain: Benefits
Having your domain name from shopify confers several advantages.
Be assured of the availability of your domain name
The uniqueness of the domain name is an essential point to check before the exploitation of said name. So with shopify, you don’t worry anymore. When you determine the name that suits you, you check the international availability of the name by filling in a specific field. If it turns out that the name is already used by a third party, you are no longer allowed to reuse the same name accordingly. In this case, you change your name to have another one that is not yet in use.
Accompaniment to find an available and personalized name
Sometimes you lack inspiration once the name you were thinking of is already in use. This is quite normal. To help you quickly reach your goal, shopify makes proposals to you based on the keyword you introduce. The keyword in question must reflect your activities. You will have a list of domain name proposals. Among these, you can find relevant and very interesting ones followed by their annual costs.
In addition, it is important to remember that memorizing the domain name should not pose any difficulty to customers. Therefore, it should be as short and simple as possible. It must reflect your activity and promote natural referencing. You then understand that the choice of a domain name proposal by shopify should not only take into account the cost.
Security of personal data
The confidentiality of your data is decisive for the security of your activity. Therefore shopify employs effective strategies like “WHOIS”. This is a technology that essentially protects you against cyber-attacks as well as computer theft. Your data is completely hidden and therefore inaccessible.
Domain name management monitoring
In view of the success of your activities, shopify offers you a methodical support after the assignment of the domain name. You thus benefit from support in several areas, namely the redirection of e-mail addresses, the creation of subdomains, the renewal of these subdomains and their deletion. For any shopify domain problem, you can then count on the effectiveness of their support.
