Domain Names
Today while looking for some new domain names I began to wonder when does a domain name become too long for users to try and remember. Or even worse, when does a domain name become too long for them to even type? There are so many quality domain names already taken, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find useful ones. I consider a domain name useful if it is easy to remember for the users and is somewhat catchy. Sometimes you can get lucky and come up with a name such as Yahoo and over time people will begin to associate your site with searches and resources.
How big of a role does a domain name play in the user’s decision to go to a site? What I mean is if Amazon had been called Just Books instead, would it have mattered? I am sure there is no research for this, but I do wonder if there is some research showing the optimal letter count in domain names. What makes for a quality domain name? Any thoughts?
Also how do you feel about non-conventional domain names such as gada.be? Do these serve only to confuse users?
Related reading:
In my opinion, del.icio.us has proven that the top level domain could be more than a meaningless extension and that a non dot com could turn out to become a succesfull “brand”.
I’ve written a list of domain hacks suggestion for all 249 local top level domain and it surely shows that there is some serious potential (and fun potential as well). I whish more website would dare to use “domain hacks” instead of sticking to the old (boring) dot com.
By Ozh on October 13, 2005 3:08 am
Well… Some domainnames can be very long but still very rememberable, take mine:
http://www.informationwantstobefree.com/
/Andy
(Yes, I’m very proud of the name.)
By Andy on October 13, 2005 3:49 am
Long domains are a bad idea. I tend to think having hyphens isn’t great either, as it can confuse matters (except in the case of Experts’ Exchange, where it stops the domain reading as “Expert Sexchange”…).
Gada.be is short, easy to type on a mobile phone (the reason it was chosen, apparently) and is memorable precisely because it’s “non-conventional”, or “unconventional” as we say in the UK ;)
You’re not going on another Web 2.0 hatefest, are you, Scrivs?
By Tim Beadle on October 13, 2005 4:21 am
I think that in the past, genericproductcategory.com names were actually helpful, but these days the more your name stands out, the better.
If your site is a part of an offline company, then as close to your company name as possible. If it is a new internet based company / product / service, then something memorable and spellable is ideal.
I have seen so many people who google for *everything*, even website URLs they visit daily, that it does not seem so important anymore. As long as they know how to find the site again.
By Mathew Patterson on October 13, 2005 4:21 am
I don’t think it’s as much the number of characters as it is the familiarity or creativeness of the name. For instance, I used to work for the United Space Alliance, and they have the whole name of the company as their domain - 19 letters. My email address was even worse, mark.fusco@usahq.etc for a grand total of 37 characters. Yet, I can’t seem to get a domain name like “iyhy.com” to stick in my mind for more than a few seconds — even had to go check back less than a minute after looking it up to see if I wrote it down correctly.
Gada.be is a cool name. I don’t see that as being anymore complex than derbauer.de or nrg.be. I guess first impressions and the overall experience count as well.
By Mark on October 13, 2005 7:46 am
I am not a very big fan of the domain name “hacks”. I like the genericproductname.com variety domain names, with shorter being better, of course.
By Blaine Moore (Run to Win) on October 13, 2005 9:00 am
Yeah, well we know shorter isn’t that much of an option today, unless you want a word that can’t even be pronounced.
My concern with the domain hacks is that if people hear gababe will they think gadabe.com? I guess someone would spell it out anyways.
By Scrivs on October 13, 2005 9:12 am
I wouldn’t want the task of branding a non-conventional domain name.
del.icio.us drives me nuts. If it wasn’t plastered all over the web I could never remember if it was deli.cio.us, or de.licio.us, etc.
.com is still king, and while that’s going to have to change soon because of shear availability issues, I sure wouldn’t want to be the guy to make the leap.
I think we just have to be more creative. Look at the top sites on the net, Google, Amazon, Yahoo, eBay, etc. Hardly top picks as far recognition by product at a glance, but they’re memorable, and with the right branding they’ve become the best known names for their respective products, despite having no literal link to the products themselves.
By Adam Thody on October 13, 2005 9:54 am
When it comes to domain names I think a couple of rules apply:
1) Shorter is better.
2) Try to get a .com
OR
Make sure your name is something unique, but be prepared to explain it if it’s too “unique” or hard to spell…
i.e. flickr.com… if someone told you - “Hey, check out flickr.com, it r0×0rs…” you’d think 1)they’re retarded, and 2) hey… lemme check out flicker.com… (because who in their right mind thinks to spell - “flick-ur”, flickr?
I used to work for a company that had the domain name Double-Dot.com. I hated it. When we told people what our domain name was, we had to say “Double Hyphen Dot Dot Com” - which sounded stupid. Of course, we tried to shorten our name over time to just “Double Dot Com” when we answered our phones - but an interesting thing occurred… a potential client thought our web address was double.com … and visited it … and it turned out to be a porn site… we didn’t get their business.
Make sure whatever domain name you choose, keep it as simple as you feel comfortable with.
By cdharrison on October 13, 2005 9:58 am
I had been wondering about the length of names, too. But I finally convinced myself that a long, memorable, and meaningful name is much better than a short, meaningless name. Hence, http://www.eatdrinksleepmovabletype.com!
By Dan Wolfgang on October 13, 2005 10:12 am
I have no sources to back this up, but I’ve always heard that 5-7 letter domains are considered the “sweet spot”. Short and memorable.
In the pharmaceutical industry, drug names are strategically concocted to be memorable. They throw in those hard consonants and odd letters to make them different from other drug names (Think Viagra, Xanax, LexaPro, Zyprexa, etc). How could this relate to catchy domain names?
Longer domain names, no matter how memorable they may be, will suffer from spelling errors. I’ve worked on many websites with long domain names(17 letters, 19 letters, 30 letters, 36 letters). All of them were hard to type out even when I had to do it scores of times every day.
Domain Hacks? They might as well be embraced, because they are inevitably going to become the trend in web 2.0. Just have to remember where all those damn dots go.
By Kyle Posey on October 13, 2005 10:20 am
That’s hardly anything to do with branding, and everything to do with being the best in show. No matter how stupid your domain name is, if you are streets ahead of everyone else at what you do, your URL will become embedded in the users’ consciousness.
By Matthew Pennell on October 13, 2005 10:29 am
The folks at Typographi.com would be good folks to ask what they think of domain name hacks.
The TLDs all mean something, even if most people don’t know it, and you never know when the day will come when either 1) people figure it out, or 2) someone tries to enforce it. Better to just rethink your name and live with it than try to be clever and get screwed later, like Typographica did.
By Lanny Heidbreder on October 13, 2005 10:36 am
The last few comments make me think that it all comes down to:
If your plan for success relies on people remembering your url to type it in (as opposed to it being all over the web to find, having it sent to them etc) then you have your work cut out for you no matter what.
By Mathew Patterson on October 13, 2005 10:52 am
Short names: Someone recently pointed out many “web 2.0″ names are normal words with a missing or added letter.
flickr colr ning odeo
And, as mentioned above, the other big trend has been non-dot-coms. Which you can now construct automatically at http://www.xona.com/domainhacks/ (but that’s not how I came across podca.st).
By Michael Mahemoff on October 13, 2005 11:51 am
My general rule is that I don’t like to use things that are complete words in combination with an abbreviation, I don’t like dashes in a domain, and I don’t like to get too cute with them.
For example, when I worked at 45 Degrees North, our domains were 45-n.com and later we added 45degreesnorth.com. Now, it’s amazing how many people don’t know what a dash is when you say “the numbers 4 and 5 dash N.” They often say, “dash or hyphen?”
So we spelled it out. Almost. We left the number in there. So telling someone my email address was always, “dsimon@45degreesnorth.com, that’s d for dave, simon - s, i, m, o, n, the at sign, the numbers 4 and 5, degrees north spelled out.” What a mess. And my name was easy. My coworker’s name is Jason Van Orden. People always screw up his.
I guess the point is to keep it as simple as possible.
By Dave Simon on October 13, 2005 12:07 pm
I hate dashes, hyphens whatever.
“What’s your company name?”
“beer-mats.com”
“oh beetmats.com”
“no, beer DASH mats.com, beersmats.com is our competitor”
“which key is dash?”
By Tom on October 13, 2005 12:12 pm
I found my domain from a deleted domains list, it’s not perfect but it’s nice and short.
I found del.icio.us a real pain when I started to use it, I could never remember where the dots went and messed up the spelling of delicious.
By Tom on October 13, 2005 12:17 pm
First, there’s definitely the “your name gets associated with your service” effect if your services is actually good. Eventually the name becomes nothing more than a placeholder (Band name “Korn” anyone?)
Second, short is also a good idea (arapehlivanian.com) is a pain in the rump for anyone to remember. sigh.
Thirdly, get a dot com. Even though the .com TLD was origianlly meant for companies, people just take you more seriously (and the common folk associate web with .com)
Lastly, common names (though practially impossible to get) add prestige because you must’ve been around a long time ago to get “books.com” or you must have enough pull to get it from someone who owned it previously.
By Ara Pehlivanian on October 13, 2005 12:25 pm
And no dashes. this-is-my-site.com is really a pain to spell out vocally. “Hey, go to nine dash rules dot com.” It just works better without the dashes.
By Ara Pehlivanian on October 13, 2005 12:31 pm
Dashes can be good if your domain is like http://www.experts-exchange.com ;)
By Tom on October 13, 2005 12:33 pm
Tom - I agree… but still… if you’re telling someone about your site you have to say “Experts Hyphen Exchange Dot Com”
A problem you wouldn’t have it you didn’t have the hyphen…
By Chris Harrison on October 13, 2005 12:49 pm
I think one or two words is the best, three words is ok, but more than three words is excessive.
Words that work well together without dashes are also best.
Proper names make things a little easier, if you don’t have a common name (lucky me).
Numbers are confusing. Are they spelled out or not? Is it 1gizmo.com or onegizmo.com?
Generic names like books.com and shopping.com don’t impress me as much as more unique ones like amazon, yahoo, and google.
It’s hard to find a domain name that works well. I’d just sit down and brainstorm as many names as possible, then figure out any variations on those names (plural, singular, adjective, verb). Recently I started http://perfectfifths.com which I think is a name very memorable and well-suited to its subject matter. But I did have to rule out several alternatives (including the singular version: perfectfifth.com) before I was done.
By Jennifer Grucza on October 13, 2005 12:56 pm
37signals had a post about this a few months back. their claim was that domains don’t matter AS much, because everyone uses google to find stuff.
and #21 tom: hahaha.
By Brian Breslin on October 13, 2005 12:59 pm
There’s good names still out there; you just have to think about them a little bit more than before.
The upside to this is that you will have at the very least a unique brand identity.
:cough:burnball.com:cough:
Goddamnit, it’s past august :(
By Alex Cabrera on October 13, 2005 2:54 pm
My first personal domain name in 1997 was jabbott.com - my first initial, last name - and I was quickly aware that folks had problems spelling it. I later picked up loudstyle.com since it is a lot easier to spell and remember.
When I was working on the American Airlines website, I was alway very aware of how great the AA.com domain was.
By Jeremy Abbott on October 13, 2005 2:59 pm
While del.icio.us is neat, and I have now remembered it, for the longest I had an incredible difficulty remembering it.
And del.icio.us might make sense to web geeks, but your average consumer sees that and thinks “WHAT?”.
By Aaron Lebo on October 13, 2005 3:30 pm
jeremy #26 & aaron #27 sort of touched on something that I was thinking. ease of use or familiarity of a word isnt global so you really have to think and tailor your domain name to your audience.
I tend to like domain names that are phonetic and either make sense for the product selling (dictionary, browsercam) or are unique enough that I can associate (and spell) them (bebo, mezzoblue) I think could remember delicious a lot better if it were delicio.us or even delicious.us just because it doesn’t help my memory at all to chop words into unnatural bits. If it’s short and related to your product I don’t think it matters if it’s a dot com or not. It took me a couple times to remember sxc.hu but now that it’s associated it’s in there for good. on the other hand theres a very useful project management type beta out that I signed up for and would love to use but can’t remember the product (and thus the url) to save my life. So I don’t mind unconventional TLDs as much as I do the word butchering.
For an audience of native french speakers though there is a whole different set of rules. Even various forms of english are different enough to warrant thinking about
By sunshine on October 13, 2005 9:46 pm
Not to mention, I think del.icio.us and other such names are ultimately restricting because you lose the chance to ever have subdomains.
search.icio.us ain’t ever happening.
By Aaron Lebo on October 13, 2005 10:47 pm
I think del.icio.us and other such names are ultimately restricting because you lose the chance to ever have subdomains
Not really, you can have multiple levels of subdomains…. search.del.icio.us
By Mathew Patterson on October 14, 2005 2:37 am
del.icio.us - I still can’t remember it to type it in. There are still some great names availble if you look for simple 2 word combinations.
By HostingDiary on October 14, 2005 9:52 am
I JUST registered my new domain, fresharrival.com in shock because it says what I want it to say, is a dot com, isn’t too terribly long and is pretty self-explanatory. I didn’t think there were any available domains to fit that criteria anymore.
By richard on October 14, 2005 1:01 pm
Recently I had to think of a name for a site or two. I was brainstorming with a friend but I had to explain what I was looking for IN A URL.
I’d say, short and catchy. It doesn’t need to be too short (most of them are gone anyway). If it’s a little longer but rolls off the tounge that’s fine.
I say avoid NUMBERS and hyphens/dashes. Say the domain name out loud. Imagine you’re telling someone the domain name. Is it a number or the word of the number? 118 dot com. Is that 118.com or oneoneeight.com. I avoid hyphens coz of the explaining when saying it.
.com if you can, else your country.
Personally I don’t like those wor.ds domains, I find them hard to remember.
By trovster on October 14, 2005 3:14 pm
Thing about Flickr is, is that it sounds like ‘Flikker’…which means puff (gay person) in Dutch.
How succesful do you think Flickr had been if they’d been called fag.com ?
By AkaXakA on October 14, 2005 3:52 pm
We registered gadda.be just in case… as well as a few other “sounds like” .com domains (which aren’t currently resolving). I was going out on a limb with gada.be, certainly - but the Belgians love it. ;)
By Chris Pirillo on October 16, 2005 1:49 am
I don’t like these wordy domain names like gada.be. They are hard to remember and often unexperienced internet users don’t get the point behind it. People might as well try gadabe.be or simply gadabe, which obviously doesn’t work!
Few days ago I registered some pretty cool domain names.
hereistart.com
herewestart.com
ilovethestates.com
onboardsurfing.com
surfonboard.com
mymerchandising.com
yourmerchandising.com
wemakegoodwebsites.com
wesellgoodproducts.com (I was shocked it was free!)
whatweknowtoday.com
I kind of registered them for fun, but if someone likes them, let me know :)
By Sietse on October 16, 2005 12:05 pm
I use delicious but hell, I can never remember where the dots go. So if I ever have to tell a friend about it I tell them to google for it and then link through.
By Paul Watson on October 17, 2005 5:09 am
I work for a company called “CPAmerica.” This is pronounced like “CPA - America,” (we’re a Certified Public Accountant trade association).
However, our URL is “cpamerica.org,” and if someone asks for this over the phone, we pronounce it like “CP - America” so that they don’t enter something like “cpaamerica.org” into their address bar.
Now, we have a problem with employees pronouncing the company name incorrectly in everyday conversation, because they got used to prouncing it a certain way in order to communicate the URL correctly.
By Graham on October 17, 2005 9:17 am
yougiveloveabad.name
:-) Registered that one a couple years back when dotster had .name on sale.
By JC on October 17, 2005 11:47 am
I’m wrestling with this for one or two clients I have. I agree, for any site to be taken seriously, you need .com, especially a business.
Also, what about dashes? I’ve created a few domains with dashes to make them more readable, but they are harder to type.
I’d give domain hacks a few more years to let the r.o.w. catch up to us ubergeeks.
If I had to choose between memorability and typeability, I would choose memorability. You can always bookmark a hard to type domain.
By job.mudflap on October 17, 2005 12:42 pm
I definitely made a mistake using a long name for my blog. Even I’m always making mistakes typing it in. I think a two word title is the limit.
By Neil on October 17, 2005 1:03 pm
I remember del.icio.us by always pronouncing it in my head as del ishio us. It would be cooler if the dots were at the syllable boundaries (de.li.cious).
By Jennifer Grucza on October 17, 2005 2:31 pm
Good conversation.
It has to be memorable and it has to make sense.
I like gada.be … but if it were my company, I would change the name to gada.be
This really is simple branding. de.li.cious works because they’ve carried it all the way through and are all over the web.
As for it not making a difference because people look to Google first…yes, they look at google first. But the first thing I do is type in the companies name. If your url doesn’t relate then it doesn’t come up. Google’s first choice is to find the url with the terms you typed in. Type in vision to sight and we’re top runners.
On the other hand we are just about to change our name because it could be vision 2 sight it could be vision to site it could be vision too site…etc. etc. KISS
By Michael on October 18, 2005 12:26 pm
I was going to post that I don’t think domain hacks work (like del.icio.us), only to remember my own domains are linu.cx (”Linux”) and spamsu.cx (”Spam sucks”) :)
By Lode on October 19, 2005 4:49 am
Matthew (comment #30): What he means is that the del.icio.us folks actually registered the domain icio.us. So only they could create new subdomains that ended in icio.us (like search.icio.us).
By Colin Viebrock on October 19, 2005 11:00 am
Something no one mentioned, but search engines supposedly like domains with dashes, as you can load your domain with keywords. Not sure if that is quite as relevant anymore.
By Jeff on October 19, 2005 8:28 pm
#46… not necessarily… I’m not sure how it’s done, but I know you can have multiple leveled sub-domains… One of our clients goofed when they placed an ad in the YellowPages, and put their URL as http://www.school.mysite.com or something similiar to that… and our domain administrator was able to set it up…
Might want to Google it just to be sure, but it can be done.
By Chris Harrison on October 20, 2005 12:36 am
I think (because I found one that works for me!) that a mix of the “doesn’t mean anything else” and “generic descriptive name” is the best - i own loftlust.com - so while yes I have to deal with people confused on what it means, my target readers (er, people like me I guess) seem to grasp it just from saying it the first time, or at least land in the ballpark. Once they see the site, it seems to stay memorable.
(and no, I don’t sell real estate, that’s the number one thing it gets confused with…)
By Brittany on October 20, 2005 1:31 am
3 words is excessive stick to 2 words where possible.
By Julio on October 20, 2005 4:00 am
In terms of available domains, I was surprised to get stayplaces.com arriveplaces.com & moveplaces.com
and there are still some novelty .coms out there like fruitybat.com :)
By Kelby Garside on October 25, 2005 8:38 am
I think the problem can be two-fold. You can think of a great name for your business/product, but if the domain name is taken, it’s back to the drawing board. Likewise, you happen across an awesome, simple domain name, but then you have to think of the ramifications of using that domain to represent your business. Luckilly the domain was available when I finally settled on Mad Web Skills as my business name.
By Michael McCorry on November 3, 2005 8:12 pm
I agree - some doamins work, some don’t. Being inspired by “del.icio.us” I go tthis one:
http://prete.ntio.us
By michael on November 18, 2005 1:26 pm
When I found blogoplex.com available I was amazed. I was equally amazed when I discovered the .net version was available as well. I snagged them both.
By Gary Miller on December 8, 2005 3:42 pm
Best practice guidelines for content / editorial suggest hyphens do help in the dark art of SEO. Your site (apparently) has a much better chance of being picked up by a search engine with the URL ‘www.red-fish.com’ rather than ‘www.redfish.com’ - you effecitvely deliver the relevant word on a plate.
On a completely different topic, what does everyone think of using abbreviations? E.g the youth information website http://www.need2know.co.uk
By Dan on January 5, 2006 7:22 am