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names are mostly irrelevant. domains however, are not. Make sure you get the .com, make sure you get all the typos (if you haven't bought ~10 domains you're do
by pclark 18y ago
names are mostly irrelevant. domains however, are not.
Make sure you get the .com, make sure you get all the typos (if you haven't bought ~10 domains you're doing it wrong).
Avoid stuff like "getx" (getdropbox) no one remembers the get and that'll piss users off, you'll also have to deal with dropbox.com being a competitor/spammer/something bad down the line.
If you can get a name that vaguely tells what you do, awesome. If its clever, awesome. Be wary of long names - we love Broadersheet, but it is rather long. We'll see.
Don't do the d.o.t thing, its lame, annoying, hinders your audience, maybe even hurts your SEO. Yahoo bought delicious.com, and note the techy audience initially.
I have this belief, you know you've found a great name (eg "how about z?") when you then type z into a domain checker and the .com is available -- I take that as a sign of yes!
- axod 18y agoAll agreed... I still have no clue why 37signals settled for basecamphq and campfirenow. Terrible domains. And agreed with dropbox. If I ever want to check out dropbox, I now need to google for it, or try to decide which sub-optimum domain they're using. Surprise, basecamp.com has adsense at the top, which includes an ad for basecamphq.com. Same with dropbox.com. That's silly expense. There's tons of great domains not taken out there. Don't believe any of the domain whores who tell you "Premium 4 letter domains like srxq.com usually go for 4 figures". There's a large range of even 4 letter .com names available for the reg. fee. Just sit down for a day with a domain checker, and find something easy to say and spell, which isn't taken. I did that a year and a half ago and decided on mibbit. I still like it enough :)
- ivankirigin 18y agoIsn't DropBox's success evidence that domains don't matter that much? I suppose they are mainly download software, and not a destination site. Also, the site can be reached from the desktop with a direct link.
- pclark 18y agohow many users were put off by the domain (eg, couldnt find it / signed up to wrong service)? Answer: you don't know, but you can guarantee at least 1 was.
- ivankirigin 18y agoI'm sure you're right, that users like it less. But you can't say a good domain is requires for success, given theirs.
- pclark 18y agocertainly not, but a bad name can restrict success.
- spatulon 18y agoI agree about the importance of having a .com domain, but it's still rather unfortunate, since I can only presume it's the primary cause of all the obnoxious nonsense-words we see as Web 2.0 company names. Flickr, digg, reddit, pownce, frappr, tumblr spring to mind as a few high-profile example.