The Design Lounge

Before you rush out and choose your domain name or name your website, you might want to consider the following points:

Naming a site after its domain name is important, for the simple reason that when people think of your website, they’ll think of it by name. If your name is also your URL, they’ll automatically know where to go. For example, when people think of thefreecountry.com, they don’t have to wonder what URL to type into their browser to get there. The name of the site is also the URL.

Generic vs. Brand Names                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               

For that reason, I personally feel that a domain name that matches your brand name is very important. The very name that you use to advertise your product is the name that you will want for your domain, because that is the first thing that people will try in their browser. It is also the easiest thing for them to remember, and whatever that is easily remembered, will be more likely to be tried out than the obscure domain name.

The Long and Short of it!
Domain names can be of any length up to 67 characters. You don’t have to settle for an obscure domain name like avab.com when what you mean is AcmeVideosAndBooks.com.   Some argue that shorter domain names are easier to remember, easier to type and far less susceptible to mistakes: for example, “getit.com” is easier to remember and less prone to typos than “connecttomywebsiteandobtainit.com”.

Which would I go for? I’d go for the shorter name if I can get a meaningful one, but I’m not averse to longer names. However, I would probably avoid extremely long names verging on 67 characters. Aside from the obvious problem that people might not be able to remember such a long name, it would also be a chore typing it and trying to fit it as a title on your web page, business card, etc.

Should you get a hyphenated name?

a. Disadvantage: It’s easy to forget the hyphens when typing a name. Many users are used to typing things like freecpluscompilers.com but not free-c-plus- compilers.com. They’ll probably leave out the hyphens and wind up at your competitor’s site.

b. Disadvantage: When people recommend your site to their friends verbally, having hyphens in your domain name leads to more potential errors than when the name does not contain hyphens.

c. Advantage: Search engines can distinguish your keywords better and thus return your site more prominently in search results for those keywords occurring in your domain name.

d. Advantage: The non-hyphenated form may no longer be available. At least this way, you still get the domain name you want.

Personally, I prefer to avoid hyphenated names if I can, but I guess it really depends on your domain name and your situation.

.com, .net, .what?

One common question I encounter is from people who can’t get the “.com” domain of their choice, but find the “.net”, “.org” or other country-specific top level domains (TLDs) available (like .us, .de, .nu, .sg, etc). Should they try for these?

The first school of thought goes on the premise that it is better to have a domain name of your choice “myperfectdomain” even if it has a TLD of “.net”, “.org” or some other country specific extension, than to wind up choosing an obscure domain name for the simple reason you can’t get your first choice. Thus they would settle for domain names like “myperfectdomain.de” or “myperfectdomain.net” or whatever. Against this is the argument that if you get a country specific domain, people might think that your business only caters to that country.

Another school of thought finds that “.net” and “.org” extensions are actually quite acceptable domain names. For some, the “.org” extension actually describes the non-profit nature of their organization. So, for example, the famous Apache web server can be found at “apache.org”.

As you can see, there are actually good grounds for accepting any of the above views. My personal footnote to the above arguments is that if you get a domain name with an extension other than “.com”, make sure that you promote your business or website with the full domain name. For example, if your domain name is “dogandcatfood.net”, make sure that when you advertise your site or business, call it “dogandcatfood.net” not “dogandcatfood”. Otherwise people will assume a “.com” extension and travel to the wrong place.

Whatever you chose, give it some thought, ask a few people to ask them what they would intuitively search for you by, and when in doubt – by several and you can point them to your site. For $8 a year, it’s worth it!

References: Godaddy.com, About.com