A Rose By Any Other Domain Name….

I’m a big fan of Shakespeare. I know there’ll be folks who’ll stop reading this blog right now, suddenly haunted by memories of that hazy feeling you get when you’re in English class and you can’t understand a word of what Suzy in the front row just read out from her copy Romeo and Juliet or Hamlet. But bear with me. Like it or not, good old Will had a way with words. He could string ‘em together with such elegance that even today, many of the phrases we use come directly from his pen.

Take “A Rose by any other name would smell as sweet”, for instance. Probably true if you’re Romeo trying to woo Juliet, but not if you’re the creator of a website. A bad name, and you could come off smelling like a pile of steamy dog-crap.

I reckon we’ve all come across a domain name or two that makes us wonder what its creators were thinking when they came up with it. I’ve recently considered, for example, Recruitmenow which sounds like a site for cat placements and hoojano. It took me two weeks to interpret the meaning of that one, at first I thought it was some sort of porn affair (run-off from Oraljobs, see my blog on that one) Gobbldegoop.

We have an innate sense of what makes for a stinker of a name, but pinning down the factors making for a good domain name is a bit harder. Webestate is getting sparser and sparser so finding a good name that is available can be difficult. Here are some tips for creating a great domain name:

Make the name meaningful: try to keep it around the meaning of the core concept of the site

Make it uniquely identifiable: while some of these points apply across all marketing, this is probably the most important to remember with a domain name. Give the site a name that will not mean that a misspelling will send it to the competition.

Make it easy to type so that people don’t have to rely on links and shortcuts to come visit you.

Make it Memorable: most folks can only remember 7+/-2 digits and the same rule applies to memory for the letters of words that are made up. Make your name easy to remember.

Give it a little X factor: Charm, charisma, quirkiness, something a little out-of-the-ordinary will help with fulfilling a few of the above criteria.

Let’s have a little fun…let’s call it Domain Names 101…check out how many domain names, just off the top of your head, match the above criteria…good times for those of us who are thinking internet thoughts at 4a.m…..