How important is a domain name? After you’ve been to the site a couple of times you don’t need to pay attention anymore do you? It’s either bookmarked or you type it in without thinking about it. But what about your web site? Doesn’t your domain name need to be instantly recognisable as part of your business/brand/whatever?
I’m my humble opinion domain names fall into three categories:
• those instantly recognisable as part of a brand, for example google.com, bbc.co.uk and disney.com
• those where the domain name tells you what the site is about or what the product is – download.com, domain-name-ideas.com and tvguide.co.uk
• domain names that have very little or no relation to the product, service or web site theme – mazumamobile.com, quimble.com and amazon.co.uk.
Ideally we would all like to have the best possible domain name but that isn’t always an option – if you come up with a good one someone else will have already though of it and bought it.
There are a number of web sites out there that can help you find domain name “hacks“, this is where the domain name is also part of the suffix. For example dras.co.uk or del.icio.us. This type of domain name is very effective in terms of being easily remembered but can also cause confusion. How many times have you told someone a domain name only to forget if its a .com or .co.uk? Add a hacked domain name and you have the potential for confusion, so to be on the safe side do you also buy the .com and .co.uk versions as well? Doesn’t this defeat the object of doing it? I feel that if you’re going to use this style of domain name it should be very good like del.icio.us.
So what type of domain name should you use? In short it depends on the business you’re in, the contents of the web site and what’s available to purchase. The domain name should fit in with your identity. With the millions of web sites already out there a little creativity in you domain name can help you stand out from the crowd.