Why having the right domain name is so important

Trying to figure out whether your domain name is a great choice? Here's a four point system of scoring to help you figure it out. 

#1 - Short
A great domain name needs to be short. One website, Art-U-Frame.com, was able to get the domain art.com. They paid $450,000 for that name, and it is easy to see why they did. Most people won't remember the Art-U-Fram.com URL, but the art.com one is very easy to remember. It is better to have a short name because it is easier to spell. This site had sales double after making this change.

#2 - Memorable
A good domain name needs to be memorable and sometimes even short names are not easy to remember. One company went with a short name, bscs.com, which stood for Boyle's Sierra Carpeting Sales. While the domain name was nice and short, very few people were really going to remember this unless they were part of the company. Of course most people are going to remember IBM, which means it is great to use the initials for the domain name, since the customers already know you with the initials. Usually though, using initials as your domain name is not a great idea.

Domain names that don't make sense by themselves won't be remembered, which means your customers won't be able to keep it in mind. A better domain name would be Boylescarpet.com, since it is meaningful as well as easy to remember.

Canadian Dr. Michel Fortin, known as the "Success Doctor," found that meter and rhythm helped to make a name for a business or even a domain name memorable. He recommends the use of a "singsong" domain name which will help people to remember it and cites the use of domain name wilsonweb.com as one that was really successful and it met the next criteria too.

#3 - Related to the Business Name or Type of Business
A great domain name will be one that is easy to guess. A few days ago I was trying to get to the Focus on the Family website. I entered in focusonthefamily.org and it came up straight away. While the core domain happened to be family.org, I could just enter the name of their organization as well to find them.

If you have a clumsy business name, then go with a domain name that is related to your business. One teak furniture company from Indonesia was called Indofurn. They choose the domain solidteak.com, which is definitely a great choice, although they could have chosen indofurn.com. But possibly going with both names would have been a good idea for them.

#4 - Difficult to Misspell
A fourth criteria is rather obvious - difficult to misspell. You would be amazed at all the domain names that are difficult to spell if you only hear it once or twice. There are many people who have a hard time spelling, while others are not great at typing. With this combination, you really need to make sure that your domain name is short, easy to remember, logical, and one that you can easily spell. One example is rosevilleelectric.com. This does have to do with the company located in Roseville, so it is related to the business, but having two "e's" in the middle makes you wonder if you spelled it right. You could have a hyphen in the name, but then you must tell people it is "Roseville-electric.com and has a hyphen between the words." If you have to constantly explain the way to spell the name, then it is not a great domain name for you. Which brings us onto the next thing; purchase alternate domain names as soon as possible.

Spending the money to secure domain names for a couple years may seem like a big investment if you have a small business. Of course as you get bigger, you'll begin to wish you had purchased the .org and .net versions of your site as well as common misspellings of the site as well. When you are successful, others can make money by getting traffic from those who try to get to your website but spell it wrong.

You may think that having several domain names will be confusing for people. It won’t! Just advertise the one name, but you can get more traffic to your site with the other domain names. Just point them all to the same site.

Back to Boyle's Sierra Carpet Sales: We came to the conclusion that bscs.com was not a memorable name. Boylescapret.com is a better option. However, Mr. Boyle should also consider purchasing boylescarpets.com as well, just in case someone thinks it is a plural name. Another good one is boylecarp.com in case someone didn't think of the name as possessive. Boyles-carpet.com is a great one as well. There are some search engines that like domain names that have keywords in them in a discrete way.

When you invest in several domain names, this is a small investment compared to the marketing value it can provide you with. So it is a great idea to go with various combinations before others take those names and your customers end up at another website instead of yours.
So, it is certainly worthwhile spending time in choosing the right domain name and if you remember these four tips you won’t go too far wrong.