How to Name your Website?

How to name your website or brand?

Big question, simple answer. Read below.

Naming a website is like a smart art. It doesn’t matter what it will lead to but what matters more how effectively it leads to that. Yes, website name – makes sense. And that is why people spend as much time in reaching to a right name for the website as they take in choosing the right name for their business or even their kid.

You need to think, re-think and decide. You want a unique name, with a good meaning and it must make sense to what you feel about the brand/service offering. And doing all this makes sense, a lot of sense.

So what makes the exercise a great deal now? Why is it too important to choose the right name? There is only one answer – REACH & RECALL.  We all create websites to make a presence in the worldwide web. To be there when we are searched for, to be found when the need is. And what makes all of this possible? Well, here are some pointers for you – to choose the right Website name.

Keep it Simple

Simplicity is evergreen. Follow KISS [Keep It Short & Simple] principle of communication, website name should also be kept simple. Make sure the website name is easy. A website name must be easy to pronounce, easy to listen and easy to type and most importantly easy to remember.

Avoid Symbols

Use of symbols in a website name is not recommended. These complicate the name and hence people to tend to go away from the website. A very basic example is, not every person we happen to meet understands the symbol for the word hyphen and that’s how we end up losing a visitor, a prospective client.

Keywords & Relevance

We must think about the top keywords for our website and accordingly we can choose a web name. This simplifies the task. Though there are website names which are just not relevant but we recommend this point to be taken as a small exercise before you choose a website name. For example, if you are looking to book a branding services website, the 5 keywords would be – branding, marketing communication, identity design, brand designs, brand strategy. So probably we can look at these 5 words and work on the suffix/prefix to create a better & easy match. Sometimes it works best. Look at these websites, brandlogo.com, brandnlogo.com, branddesign.com etc. The names suggest, they are about branding and work in the design area of a brand.

Adding a word – a color, a noun, a service etc

Many a times we have seen that the exact name which we like is not available. Worldwide means our thoughts are competing with almost everyone and the probability to get the name which we thought decreases. In that case, you can try adding a color, a noun, a service to it. If we take the previous example only, there is a site called winkbranddesign.com, brandingserved.com, brandchannel.com, blackcoffee.com etc.

Don’t worry too much about .com

Many people suggest going for a brand website for which the .com is available. I really do not think it is that important. A .net, .in, .ca or .au holds equal importance as far as you offer a great website and offer relevance, you will not lose out on the visitors or the SEOs. Having a .com is preferred but if it is not there, you can still go well about it.

Establish the Brand

Whatever name we choose for the brand website, it is important that we work on establishing the brand. A generic domain name works for the brand instantly like jobscanada.com, matrimony.com but for the intuitive names like 30thfeb.com, amazon.com, flickr.com – one need to work on the brand and establish it. We need more of branding and advertisement campaign to help the brand reach out to its right consumers.

Remember, choosing a right name is important and if you choose it carefully it will simplify your bran’d life digitally. For choosing a right website name you can also use some of the available tools which help you in picking the right Domain name, to name a few, domaintools, domainr, Bustaname, squURL (Super quick URL), Ajax whois etc.

Now if you have a tip, or want to share a tool – please share in comments, we would love to hear from you.

About the author: Jigyasa Laroiya is a brand enthusiast and is now founder-director at her brand start-up 30TH FEB. For more than 5 years, she worked on understanding, conceptualizing and executing brands & business consulting services. Before opening her own firm, she worked with agencies like Contract Advertising, Alia Group. She is also been associated as a resource person with IIM Shillong.