Small firms might find that a good domain name gives them a better profile online, but many names have already been snapped up, it has been claimed.

Adrian Lawrence, managing director of Discount Domains, explained that the massive demand for websites means that many names have been taken.

He said: "The difficulty is the whole of the English speaking world [can buy them] … If you choose a name for your business, that might be unique for the UK but it could be taken by an American business.

"In this case, it's more about what names are available depending on what your business identity is."

However, Mr Lawrence did add that the price of a domain name has now fallen, meaning firms opening up a new website will not have to pay as much.

In related news domaininformer.com reports that the new ".asia" domain suffix has received a total of 266,663 applications within the first 24 hours.

According to a recent survey by Connect, the two biggest IT headaches for businesses were 'everyday hassles with IT' (37 per cent) and 'security concerns' (32 per cent) In a recent survey of SMEs for Connect, the two most important benefits of outsourcing were 'guaranteed response times' and 'allowing in-house IT staff to concentrate on more strategic issues'