You might get some further explanation from where you purchased the server certificate, but the rule of thumb is that the Common Name and DNS names associated with the certificate determine what are the valid HTTPS requests that this server certificate can support.
Thus, if this server certificate only covers a.domain.com
then you can only use it when serving https://a.domain.com
, but not https://www.a.domain.com
because www.a.domain.com
is considered a completely different domain name (how the DNS system works).
Ask yourself and your team which are the domain names your web site is going to require, and then your server certificate must cover them all. That might require you to purchase special certificates (like Wildcard or SAN) or multiple ones.
BTW, people also prefer free certificates from Let's Encrypt, when their sites do not require complicated certificates from other CAs that have higher price tags.