.co.uk or .com?
For a business serving UK customers, .co.uk is trusted, familiar and usually available — there's no shame in it at all. Choose .com if you plan to trade internationally or your customers might assume it. If both are available and cheap, registering both and redirecting one is cheap insurance.
The rules of a good domain
Short enough to say over the phone without spelling it out. No hyphens or numbers — both invite errors. Matches your trading name as closely as possible. Passes the radio test: someone hearing it once should type it correctly first time.
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When your first choice is taken
Add a qualifier before you add weirdness: your trade or town (smithroofing.co.uk, smithroofinglondon.co.uk) reads better than smith-roofing-uk-247.biz. Check the taken domain isn't an active competitor first — trading under a confusingly similar name invites trouble.
Register it yourself, in your name
This one matters more than any other: the domain should be registered to you, at a mainstream registrar, with renewal reminders on. Businesses regularly lose their entire online presence because a long-gone developer registered the domain in their own account. Own yours.
Sort matching email at the same time
you@yourdomain.co.uk looks established in a way a free webmail address can't. Most registrars and Google Workspace make this straightforward, and it's one of the cheapest credibility upgrades available. It's also the first thing we sort on any web development project that needs it.
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