Keystrokes By KimberlyGuest Post by Katrina Manning
When choosing a domain name, you want to make sure it grows with you. In our digital world, choosing a domain names starts with choosing the name of your business. With the right domain name, you can achieve more effective marketing and increase traffic to your website. Here’s how to ensure your domain name grows with you.
What is a brand?
This is the customer-facing attribute of your company. A brand is how customers distinguish your products and services from those of your competitors. Customers will rely on the name of your company to make it stand apart, but they may also recognize the logo and slogans you use in your marketing. This lets customers make a repeat purchase if they are impressed. If they are not impressed, they will avoid your brand. Let’s just consider that customers like your brand.
As they continue to make repeat purchases, they will then use your brand to recommend your products and services to other people. Then, your reputation and trust in your products and services grows over time. This is why your brand is crucial for establishing your company’s reputation.
Is your brand valuable?
Customer loyalty is a key indicator of whether your brand is valuable. A CBI survey showed that over half of customers are willing to pay a premium for a product if it comes from a company they consider as having a good reputation. This is true even if they can find a similar product or service for cheaper elsewhere. One example is Heinz baked beans–it continues to outsell supermarket-brand baked beans just based on brand reputation alone.
What makes it this interesting is customers do not always know which company is behind a certain brand. All that matters to a customer is that they can recognize the brand itself. When someone purchases a bottle of Windex, they don’t necessarily care who makes it. Your company should then seek to develop a brand which is easily recognizable and with a domain name that is distinguishable from your competitors’ brands. You can then build up your business based on trust you start to generate.
The perfect domain name
You cannot launch your website without a relevant domain name. This requires research beforehand to ensure your desired domain name is available, and that there won’t be any issues with potential infringement. Millions of domain names are being created every single day. This means your business name won’t be available if you take your time. All domain sellers allow you the option to check the availability of your ideal domain name. You also need to have some alternative names in mind just in case the one you want isn’t available. Yet, you need to also ask these questions:
• Is it memorable?
• Is it easy to spell?
• Does it resonate with your brand?
Those three questions should put you in the right direction for obtaining a domain name which fits your brand and business industry. You can be clever, but never at the risk of logic. It is better to have a straightforward domain name than a catchy one no one can spell or remember. Your domain name is a marketing tool. Pick a name which matches your brand, puts your company in its best light, is easy to find, easy to type and easy to remember.
Should it be one word?
Some experts say yes, while others are on the fence. There are domain name purists who believe that one-word names carry more prestige. Yet, it’s difficult to have a one-word name if your business has two names. To illustrate, if you own a restaurant called Organic Eats, you couldn’t just use organic.com and expect people to know it’s a restaurant.
People to visit your eatery know it is called Organic Eats. When they want to look up your menu, they will type Organic Eats into the URL. So, it is perfectly fine to have two words. Just keep it simple and as closely aligned with your business brand as possible. After that, you can work on how to get readers to love your blog.
Forget about numbers or hyphens
Your domain name should either be a single word or a set of words. What it should not have, under any circumstances, is numbers and hyphens. When a domain name has a number or hyphen, it appears to lack Internet credibility. Also, when people are talking about websites–it is difficult to verbally communicate these types of names. Then, it limits word-of-mouth marketing. People aren’t used to typing numbers or hyphens in domain names.
If you want your domain name it grow with you, it must align with and resonate with your brand. It is crucial to find an appropriate domain name. Then, it is important to build trust with customers. Plus, if your domain name is easy to remember, then it benefits word-of-mouth marketing. As long as it is simple, catchy and logical—you can benefit from an increasingly popular domain name.