Dec 10 2010

The Right Domain Name for Your Startup

It used to be that single the most important aspect of starting a new business was location, location, location. With online businesses, this translates to domain name, domain name, domain name. The domain name of you business is important for several reasons, because it will be your de facto business name, because this will be one of the avenues of how users find you, because there is a short supply of good domain names left, because you want to stand out from your competitors, etc. But in addition to finding a good domain name for your business you should see if it’s also available on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, WordPress, and any other relevant social networking site. As soon as I buy a domain name, I try to lock up the twitter account, the Facebook page, the Tumblr and WordPress blog for that domain.

Depending on the business or product or simply to proactively protect your business from competition and spammers, you should think about snapping up domain names that reference your company or trademarks. For example, try to buy the .net, .org, .me, and other TLD versions of the domain name you are considering if available. In addition try to lock up domain names that reference your company or product in a disparaging way.

Because most single word domain names are already taken, people often combine two words or more. It is common practice to not hyphenate two or more words in a domain name. But when placing two words together be careful that it doesn’t accidentally read something different than what you intended. For example, There is s site called Therapist Finder whose domain name is therapistfinder.com which can also be read as The Rapist Finder. The is a website called Speed of Art whose domain name is speedofart.com whose domain name can also be read as Speedo Fart.

Try to avoid using a name that ties your product or service to a particular technology. Find an inspirational name that denotes a feeling of though about what you are doing but not the technology you are using. For example, Twitter is a great name for their product. No most people use Twitter with mobile device apps over 3G, but SMS was a key aspect of Twitter in the early days. The word tweet denotes so well what people do on the service, they simply post a tiny comment. Once Twitter became a success and they opened up their API to third party applications then you saw the opposite, company formed around Twitter and named themselves a such like Twitpic. Twitpic is successful despite their bad choice of name but they it does narrow people’s view on you. In the case of Twitpic, they also have the problem that they misspelled the word tweet with twit. Twit has a completely different meaning than tweet.

Another example of a company name that relied heavily on a particular technology was PodShow. PodShow later rebranded itself to Mevio but only after the whole podcasting industry was threatened by Apple copyrighting and trademarking the term podcast. The term podcast itself relies on Apple iPod product line. The industry as whole talked of using netcast instead of podcast, but that never took off. By rebranding themselves to Mevio, the company speaks to broader audience, does not tie itself to one technology or open itself for legal dispute over trademarks or copyrights issues. In the case of Mevio, the name suits it well. The prefix is me and postfix vio sounds like the last syllable of video.

In the current state of search, short and clear domain names are known to get more Google juice to complicated, hard to spell, hyphenated domains. Your domain name should be easy to say and understand over a phone, it should evoke your industry, product, or service. The right domain is worth its price for the right entrepreneur. Not to take anything away from the founder of diapers.com, but I believe that the domain name had a lot to do to the online retailers credibility with customers which ultimately lead to diapers.com being purchased for over $500 million dollars by Amazon.

Owning the right domain name can help to take your business to the next level.