Top Five Rules for Picking Your Online Store’s Name
Choosing the right domain will help you attract and generate more traffic to your website and will serve as a proper title for your site.
Here are the rules to follow:
- A .Com extension. It’s imperative that your domain name be with a .com extension. I’ve seen businesses and major web sites try to get away with .net or .org, and lose traffic because some of their intended visitors land on someone else’s web site. Or worse, confidential e-mails are sent to the wrong address. Dot com is the King.
- Easy to spell.
- Keep it up to 4 words, 5 maximum. More info on the length of domain names.
- Category Related: Your domain name should give some idea of the business you are in, and what your web site is about. It is true that some famous web based brands defy this rule, and indeed “NewEgg” doesn’t stand for a hardware and software retailer nor does “Amazon” indicate that it is an ecommerce site. But don’t let this change your mind. Remember, that Amazon.com and NewEgg.com have the advantage of being the pioneers in their chosen categories, not to mention the Millions of dollars they consistently spend on branding and advertising efforts. A domain name that stands for the content that you will find in a site is the right choice for the vast majority of businesses. People assert that a domain name should be the name of the company that stands behind a website. That again, is not true. You can always list and promote your company name within the website you establish, but the domain name – the title of your website should be category related. Also consider a slogan for your site that reinforces the area of occupation of the website.
- Generic or exclusive: There seems to be much controversy when it comes to the question: Do generic or Exclusive domain names make better representation of a website. It is true that while generic domain names result in more and better traffic for a web site, they make poor brand names. Consider the two following solutions to this problem:
- A generic, category related domain name can be redirected to your company’s URL, meaning every time surfers arrive at the generic domain they will automatically be redirected to your company’s site, just Like Toothpaste.com redirects to Procter and Gamble and Bras.com and Underwear.com redirect to Calvin Klein. This way you can enjoy the traffic of a generic domain name and still keep your original brand. For more examples of companies owning separate generic domains go to www.genericdomainnames.com.
- You can do this the other way around: Use the generic domain name as your main URL and redirect all traffic landing at your company’s URL to the site with the generic domain. Like I said, you can keep your brand name dominant on a site with a generic domain name. For example, you may title your website as follows: [GenericName].com “by” or “powered by” [Brand Name]. This is a great opportunity that not only preserves your brand name but can over time result in the generic name to be identified with your company and you can sort-of “own” the generic name as well. Think of brands like “Jeep” and “Zerox” whose brand names have literally become widely used as generic.
Note: June 2008, ICAAN recently approved a loosening of TLD rules to be rolled out in ‘09. The future supremacy of .com TLDs is uncertain, especially for localized enterprises with the introduction of language and alphabet specific–as well as city and regional–TLDs.
It is estimated that between 7-10% of surfers type-in generic keywords directly into the URL field. Having your site on a generic domain name will benefit from direct type-in traffic.
Summary:
Selection of the right domain name for your business should go hand in hand with the above listed principles. But remember that your independent insights are important as well. For every rule there are exceptions and some businesses are successful even when defying the rules. Examine your particular situation and try to determine which of the rules make sense for your purposes.
One Tip To Consider:
If the domain name you desire is taken (and not utilized by the owner) spend money and buy it. It will generate a fair ROI from the traffic you will receive from the search engines. If it is a generic name it will appreciate in value and will be worth your investment.
Don’t do / Avoid
- Avoid hyphenated domain names. People may forget to include hyphens when typing a domain name into the URL box or when sending e-mails to your account. This may cause an unnecessary loss of traffic for your business. There is one case where a hyphenated domain is worth considering: If your domain name contains 4 or more words, from a usability point of view hyphenated domains are easier to read and in such case you would want to own both the hyphenated and the non-hyphenated domain name and redirect both addresses to your site.
- Avoid inclusion of numbers in your domain name. But if you must, just make sure you buy both the digits and the word (e.g. 7 and seven). Otherwise you are likely to lose traffic to the one you don’t own.
