The Art of the Domain Name
The art of picking a good domain name is an essential skill. Being able to get it right the first time, while understanding the common tricks and skills, will not only drive traffic up but will also help tremendously in being able to guide your users to where you want them to go. Affordable and sensible domains are in short supply and getting your first choice name to brand your corner of the internet is becoming more and more about compromise. So how do you get that crucial branding balance right? What options do you have when the obvious options are unavailable or overpriced?
A great example of this in the real world is the British home improvement retailer B&Q choosing to adopt as their primary domain, diy.com. When the world shifted online in the early 2000s, B&Q were left in a tricky position as ampersands are not accepted as part of domain names and alternative spellings can often feel underwhelming. BandQ.com might look a bit unusual and BQ.com was unsupported until recently. On B&Q's own page, they explain that their online launch to diy.com was "so that customers could buy bricks (and more) with just a few clicks”, but the real benefits are much clearer than this. Having the umbrella term, diy.com, covers the catch all acronym, DIY, it is hard to find anything except for B&Q in the top two results of google when mentioning common DIY phrases (DIY Help, DIY tools, DIY shops, etc). It has very much become the default, go-to place for any DIY supplies and know-how. It is also of note that B&Q have been able to cover many of their bases by having redirects from bandq.com and .co.uk respectively so even without knowing diy.com (or the limitations of an ampersand!) you can still get to where you need to be.
This is not only the interesting redirect:
In 2002, British Gas released a new website called house.co.uk which intended to give users a non-stop shop of technical guides, service providers, and advice on gadgets to assist in household maintenance. Now, 20 years later, house.co.uk is gone but the domain is still with British Gas, redirecting anyone who wants to access this site directly to the British Gas homepage. It is a similar story with the relationship between Play.com and Rakuten, a company with an easy, go to domain, being bought out, with the new company choosing to keep the domain. With a bit of foresight, they had managed to hold onto these valuable domains, giving them the option to do whatever they wish with it or even sell it at a later date.
There are several rules of thumb that will not steer you too wrong when it comes to choosing a domain name. The end goal is to have a strong, well branded domain name which comes across as well thought out and professional. Here are some general tips to help assist in the planning process and in getting up to speed with the common pitfalls to look out for:
Keep it short and make it memorable! The shorter you can afford to make the domain name while still being relevant will help it stick with users.
Keep it sensible. Stick with common spellings and avoid the pitfalls of a tricky, unprofessional looking domain. Is it easy to say? Is it easy to spell? These are the questions that should be asked when planning a domain name. Avoiding numbers, or hyphens (if it can be helped) will reduce any confusion in communicating the domain name (can you go to “good hyphen domain, 1 please? no the number one, not the word”).
Stick with an appropriate domain extension. Based on where your potential clients are, or where you would like to emphases that you are, .co.uk or even .cymru could be a better option than .com (and much better than .biz or .info which can come across as a touch unprofessional).
Futureproof. Try to avoid domain names which could date the website in some way. If you can keep away from using dates in the domain for any non-time specific purposes, or current events or even memes you can avoid looking out of date when accessing the page in a few years time.
Research. Before purchasing a domain name, put some research into its past history just to be sure that it was not involved in any legal or trademark disputes prior, and that it is not associated with any poor press. Several online services offer the functionality to look up registered users of an internet resource, such as a domain name.
Account for the variants. If the diy.com example has taught us anything, being able to account for misspellings or common misconceptions, or even broad terms used in your industry will help in driving up traffic. If your domain has a particularly common misspelling (silent letters, i before e?) then redirecting from these urls also may also guide users to where they are looking for.
