11 Mar 09 Smart Domain Name Theory

Choosing your domain name is the first marketing step you will most likely take for your website. It is, arguably, the most important step as it decides how your site is described in the overall weave of the Web, and the most fundamental name it will go by.

As such, it is a fairly relative thing; there is no ‘right’ domain name, just the one that works for you best both practically and aesthetically. As your ‘signature’ on the Internet, you should try to imbue it with qualities that pique interest.

Here are a few suggestions:

Make it catchy. First and foremost, the name is your site’s most fundamental advertisement and it should be memorable (yet simple enough to remember). Ideally, it’s a name people can hear in a conversation, go home and accurately type into their browser from their memory alone. As an example, consider the well known movie news site Ain’t It Cool News; aintitcool.com may not be the most succinct domain name out there, but it carries with it a conversational charm that sticks easily to the brain. Puns also work well in this respect; videogames.com will never stand out as well as gamasutra.com – the play on words creates the attention, the implied link between the subject matter and pleasure maintains it (and, of course, out-and-out references to sex always make an impression, as long as they’re used appropriately).
Make it short. As we’ve already discussed, brevity isn’t the most important factor. However, the shorter the name, the easier it is to remember and the quicker it is to type into a browser – all part of making it easy for the potential customer to find you.
Make it different (enough!). A slightly different twist on your site’s content not only helps make it memorable, it makes it inevitably standout simply because the best and most simple names to remember are long gone! If you’re setting up an online music retailer, you can bet your bottom dollar that ‘cheapcds.com’ was snapped up years ago (so don’t even consider it!). Generic names come with an extra risk on top, though, because they’ll have so many variations floating around that, even if you think up an unclaimed version, you may be running the risk of granting a competitor extra trade because the customer typed cheapdiscs.com when they meant to write cheaperdiscs.com. However, it is a lot harder to mistake compactdiscounts.com, because it is such an idiosyncratic take on the same idea.
Do not deny the power of the i. Nothing says ‘fast, efficient and technologically advanced’ than the letter “i” before your name – just ask Apple. Sure, iShop sounds cheesy, but it also implies that your shopping site is efficient, easy-to-use and utilizes the very latest that online experiences have to offer – in short, all the kinds of things you want your name to embody. It may sound like I am contradicting the previous point here, for we see i(Blank)s everywhere we go, but sometimes clichés are worth considering if they give the impression we are looking for (and by the same token, an e often works just as well – what’s more interesting, eCommerce or Commerce?).
Make it say what you do. Put a word in it that directly relates to your site’s content or to the service it provides. Not only does this help make it memorable, it is also very friendly to search engines. If you want people to find your football podcast, for example, names like footballdebate or talkingfootball will always come up favorably in speculative Google searches.
Always, always, ALWAYS write them down. You may have the most intriguing business site name in the world, but until you’ve seen it in front of you in scrunched Domainspeak you have no idea what it’ll look like. Just ask the artistic agency database Who Represents, who obviously hadn’t done a paper draft when they registered whorepresents.com. You could try and reverse-argue that one as a wry comment of the underlying desperation inherent in the entertainment industry, but good luck getting anyone to buy it…

As said before, there is no subjectively correct method to choosing a domain name. However, if you keep the above points in mind they will help you come up with one that will stick in other people’s minds and keep the traffic flowing through your site from here on in. And then all you have to worry about is making the content match.