Opening a New Business

I wanted to first say sorry for the very long question; but I so very desperately need the help, and figured I give it a shot. If anyone could help me, even slightly with this it would be greatly appreciated :-)

You are going to open a new business and want to have a Web presence. And that new business is; A consulting firm specializing in Web design and marketing.
Can someone describe the domain name you would select and see if it is available. Also please answer the following questions:
Where would you go to register the name?
What was the cost involved?
Would you consider using a different TLD if .com or .net are not available? Explain your decisions and rationale.

God bless.

You've helped me a great deal, thanks!

SuccessByDesign.Com
Tu-Cows
17.95/Year
.Com if I could get it. I wouldn't want anything that sounds new. If your product is web design, I would include a number of example pages to demonstrate your skills like:

Order the product - for selling products online.
Contact the business - For professional services, like lawyers etc.
Inform the customer- Producer's product and services information page

Remember the old advertising slogan, "If it don't sell, it ain't creative."

I own a firm that specializes in design/marketing/new media/ect... I have to admit that I'm a little concerned to read about someone who's about to step into this brutally competitive field without understanding these basic technological points. EVERY new client we get has at least one horror story about a web designer who made something ugly that had good code, or something pretty that didn't function well and had horrible code, etc. Or the worst, that the designer designed the entire site using tables or Flash--which is just a rip off these days--and told the client that meta tags, submitting to search engines and outgoing links would increase their ranking. There are very, very unfortunate things that unqualified designers do that really tarnish our profession.

You cannot "design" for web and devices without constantly thinking about programming, architecture/navigation, accessibility, brand management, social integration, mobile optimization, image optimization, seo, conversion, cross browser compatibility, content development, etc. Make sure you've got someone on your team who has a firm handle on all these things, or you may find your company unprepared for the market and only able to go for cheap projects.

Some resources I recommend are lynda.com, anything WC3, Website Magazine, webpagesthatsuck.com.

Good luck. I think this is really fun, challenging and lucrative work.