Coming up with a name for your products or brands can be challenging. However, it’s a super important step in developing your business! The reason for this is that it’s one of the things that distinguishes your brand from your competition. It’s basically your business’s storefront sign on the internet and allows you to tell your brand’s story.
But how do you choose a domain name that isn’t just a name? Today we share some tips!
Different name categories
To pick the right name for your brand, product, or service you should know the categories names can fall under: literal names, metaphoric names, and fanciful names.
- Literal names describe the functionality or quality of a service, product, or brand. Such as “Grandma’s bakery”: a bakery offering traditional flour-based food such as bread, pastries, and pies.
- Metaphoric names make you think about a brand, product, or service in a way that goes beyond its everyday purpose by referring to one thing by mentioning another. Like “Forest”, which is a productivity app that helps to rebuild real forests when you’re using it.
- Fanciful names are names that are not related to the brand, product, or services’ at all. This is a great option for new brands since it allows brands to build their story from scratch. However, these types of names do take a while to establish.
Finding the right domain name
There is no right way to find the right domain name and there’s no name that’s perfect. However, one thing that’s always good to do is having a brainstorming session with coworkers, friends, or family. In a small group you can talk about the brand or product’s story & create a list of possible names. You can find inspiration in books, TV shows, and magazines. Once you’ve chosen a name it’s important to share it with people to make sure that it’s catchy and memorable and makes sense to others.
Do you think you’ve come up with a good domain name?
Then it’s important to familiarize yourself with the process. Some things to check and consider are:
- Are there similarities between your brand, product, or services and those of your competitors? If so, is it a good or a bad thing? Sometimes it helps to highlight similarities (such as GlassRepair.com) by using keywords that describe your business, whilst other times it’s better to choose a fanciful name to set yourself apart from your competitors. This depends on what you have to offer.
- What is your market? Does the name of your product and brand make sense for your market? Of course, operating in a certain market doesn’t mean you that you should have a domain name related to that field, but it should make sense.
- Is your domain name easy to type & find? This part is critical to online success. Only with an easy to type domain name, customers will be able to find your site quickly. Therefore it’s important to keep your domain name relatively short and easy to spell. Also try to avoid numbers and confusing hyphens.
- What’s your target area? If your business is local, adding your city in your domain name can make it easier for local customers to remember and find. An example is: GlassRepairLondon.com
- Did you do a trademark search? When choosing a domain name it’s important that it isn’t trademarked, copyrighted, or already used by another company.
- Did you choose a domain name extension? A domain name extension is a suffix such as .com or .nl at the end of your domain name. It’s important to choose one that fits your business. The most popular domain extension is .com. However, nowadays it can be difficult finding an available .com extension. Some other great extensions are:.app – for apps
.info – for informational sites
.co – for companies, community, and commerce
.net – usually for technical sites
.me – for personal sites
It can also be worth it to purchase misspelled versions of your domain name and different extensions. By doing this, you’re sure that competitors can’t register other versions of your brand.
Do you know what your domain name will be? Then it’s important to act fast. Domain names sell out quickly, but they are also very inexpensive.
