Understanding what makes a good domain name
Thursday, October 4th, 2007A good domain name is:
- Easy to say in person. It’s unwieldy to say “digit” before a number in aURL, or the word “dash” or “hyphen”; besides, people have a hard time finding the dash character on a keyboard.
- Easy to understand over the radio or on the phone. Words that include the ess and eff sounds are often confused when listening, as are certain consonant pairs like b/p, c/z, or d/t. If you’re selling in other countries, confusion between English consonants is different, such as b/v in Spanish or r/l in Japanese.
- Easy to spell. Using homonyms might be a clever way to get around a competitor who already owns a name you’d like to have; however, you’re just as apt to drive traffic to your competitor as to gain some for yourself. Also, try to avoid foreign words, words that are deliberately misspelled just because they are available (for example, valu rather than value), or words that are frequently misspelled
