Top 5 Mistakes Made When Naming Your Website or Company
May 9th, 2007
50 comments
Good thing your parents didn’t name you Urhines or Toolio. For the more fortunate among us, here are the Top 5 tips to keep in mind when you name your next website or business. Who am I to talk? I’ve made most of these mistakes — and lived through the pain.
1. Registering an extension other than .com
There are a lot of people out there who think that .com is the Internet. To make matters worse, lots of applications work better with .com domain names (e.g. Firefox appends www and .com to a domain name when you type something and hit Control-Enter). Moreover, over the long term, your brand will automatically be associated with the .com version. Here are some other things to remember:
- .net: Registering a .net is probably marginally acceptable. But you are setting yourself up for a painful purchase of the corresponding .com name if you become rich and famous in the future.
- .us, .info: This is completely unacceptable if you are building a long term business. Don’t skimp on the $3. Most people associate these domains with spam (since 99% of .info domains are spam).
2. Not giving yourself the chance to stand out
Give yourself the chance to differentiate yourself and rule your category or niche. Even though a generic name like buy.com might help in the short term, it does make it difficult to make it memorable over the long term. Imagine if Amazon had called itself InternetShopping.com? Or if Google had called itself search.com (Would it have dominated advertising then? How does “Ads by Search.com” sound?)
3. Hosting your blog or website on yourname.freeservice.com
Most people dont expect to get rich and famous when they start a blog. But give yourself the chance. All it costs is $5/month to host it on your own domain. And you’ll know within a few months whether you will hit it big or not. Also, as you are bootstapping your blog, its difficult for your users to take you seriously when you yourself are not willing to invest $5 in a domain name. To make matters worse, once you do go down the free path, coming out of it is really tough. Updating links for SEO, making your users update their RSS feeds — the list of things is a nightmare.
4. Making your name so obscure, nobody has a clue what it means
It’s nice party talk to explain to people how your company name means “Dancing Gazelles” in the African Zulu language. Problem is: Two seconds later, they forget the name. That’s not a nice thing the next time they need to refer your website or service to a prospective customer. At Chitika, we initially fell into this category. Luckily over time, our phonetic resemblance to chiquita, the well-known banana company, actually worked in our favor — as people always remembered the brand.
5. Forgetting to register international versions (and other variations)
As soon as you see your service gaining momentum, dont forget to register international variation of your domain. Yeah — its tough to initially shell out hundreds of dollars to register domains for all countries and variations (like .org). But when you see momentum growing, dont skimp — and dont forget. The day you get your first big PR buzz or New York Times mention, it will be too late (yeah — the domainers will beat you to it!)
Comments are open. Please feel free to add your own two cents — serious or otherwise (this example, anyone?)
Some More Light Reading:
- Top 10 Mistakes Made When Choosing a Domain Name - allbusiness.com
- 8 Mistakes To Avoid When Naming Your Business - entrepreneur.com
- *Funny* Top 10 Domain Mistakes Ever - a-poor-excuse-for-a-blog.blogspot.com
Posted by Alden DoRosario (alden [at] chitika [dot] com)
This post was inspired by Problogger’s Group Writing Project sponsored by Chitika.
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May 9th, 2007 at 6:36 pm
Did you know that video.us sold for $75,000 last week? With all the .com’s already gone, businesses just might turn to .us extensions as a reasonable alternative. If located in the US, the extension actually tells you something about the business… True, starting a .info domain is like building a house on a mudslide, but I wouldn’t dismiss the potential of .us domains just yet.
May 9th, 2007 at 8:11 pm
.com might be OK if you live in the third largest country in the world, but for the rest of us it signifies “something vaguely international”.
May 9th, 2007 at 9:13 pm
[…] Chitika wrote today about five mistakes people make when naming their companies. Meanwhile, Duct Tape Marketing’s John Jantsch recently proffered this advice for small businesses: “If you’re getting ready to start a business choose a name that can help reinforce your core message and communicate as precisely as possible what your firm does. … As with most things marketing related, keep your ideal client and your firm’s unique position in the market firmly in mind when choosing or rechoosing the name of your firm.” […]
May 9th, 2007 at 9:22 pm
[…] Read more: Chitika Filed in Advertisers […]
May 10th, 2007 at 5:28 am
I always like to have something describing the business in the company name. Why?
This may sound simple - like people are attracted to like
Like minds are attracted to like
Like thoughts are attracted to like
If you are interested, there is more at: http://www.NigelPendrigh.Com/Interview
So people go for something that they already have rapport with - quite often unconsciously
May 10th, 2007 at 9:19 am
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May 10th, 2007 at 9:34 am
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May 10th, 2007 at 10:32 am
[…] For my share, here’s my pick of the most notable Top 5 posts belonging to the Day 3 of this group writing project. Top 5 Web 2.0 Collaboration Tools by Tac Anderson - A nice list of some uber cool and useful collab tools on the web. Top 5 Mistakes Made When Naming Your Website or Company by Alden DoRosario - Learn from the Chitika team themselves on how to make a good investment by choosing wisely what to name your website or company. […]
May 10th, 2007 at 10:55 am
www.eliteretreat.info is one of the few non spammy .info’s out there.
Great tips, have a look at my group writing project as well if you get the time.
May 10th, 2007 at 11:22 am
Your post is really helpful not only to webmaster or for those who are starting a company, but to bloggers as well.
Thinking of a name of my blog took long hours of my time before settling with “MobileKo”. Why the name? Don’t even ask.
I just wish I have read your post a little sooner! I nice and helpful read!
If you have time, why don’t you drop by my post:
http://mobileko.blogspot.com/2007/05/snatch-top-5-tips-on-how-to-be.html
It’s also an entry for the problogger top 5- group writing project. ^^ Goodluck to us all!
May 10th, 2007 at 11:59 am
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May 10th, 2007 at 11:59 am
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May 10th, 2007 at 1:48 pm
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May 10th, 2007 at 3:12 pm
A lot of businesses have .co.uk here in the UK, largely if they’re appealing to UK residents only (such as elephant.co.uk and bell.co.uk are two that jump out from adverts, both are insurers). I think these are acceptable too because .co.uk and .com in the UK are synomymous with good quality services, rather than spam. That’s why I chose http://www.gospelrhys.co.uk ;)
May 10th, 2007 at 3:18 pm
I’m curious that you did not mention .biz. You did mention .net, .us and .info as not serious extensions if you’re looking to make your site famous but you left off .biz. Does that mean that .biz is a good alternative to .com?
May 10th, 2007 at 3:55 pm
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May 10th, 2007 at 4:14 pm
I help with a number of web sites and the key from our point of view is not the naming but getting your customers to associate that name to the site. Good PR can make the difference in branding and location. We have .biz (for innovative businesses) and .info (for informative and supporting enterprises), plus a mix of others.
For example:-
http://www.free-wheels.biz
http://www.webcinema.info
May 10th, 2007 at 5:30 pm
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May 10th, 2007 at 7:38 pm
Excellent post. I am using a free service right now, but planning on taking on my own domain name soon. Thank you very much for the post and please keep them coming!
May 10th, 2007 at 7:50 pm
Very wise. These mistakes are easy to make if nobody tells you. I fell victim to #3 and it’s a real problem, no doubt about it.
May 10th, 2007 at 8:33 pm
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May 10th, 2007 at 9:11 pm
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May 10th, 2007 at 9:56 pm
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May 10th, 2007 at 11:31 pm
[…] The Chitika Blog » Blog Archive » Top 5 Mistakes Made When Naming Your Website or Company Top tips and good links (including the classic - Top 10 Domain name mistakes) (tags: business online web2.0) […]
May 11th, 2007 at 3:46 am
Michael Bond said> We have .biz (for innovative businesses) and .info (for informative and supporting enterprises), plus a mix of others.
Yeah — I agree that .info is for information. However, do you really want to be the only good apple in a basket with 99 other bad apples?
Rhys said> I think these are acceptable too because .co.uk and .com.
I agree. Specially if you are servicing a UK only audience. If you expect your audience to be global though, I dont see the advantage of showing off that you are from UK or Australia. Just keep it neutral and not make the country an issue.
PS Rhys: Really liked your post by the way.
May 11th, 2007 at 3:27 pm
When looking for domains for new sites, we only look for .com. There are so few open .com domains that we actually look for the domain before we name the site.
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June 30th, 2008 at 3:31 pm
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