Commerce today is often Internet commerce. Largely because of domain names, choosing a name is different now.

I tell clients that marketing on the Internet is all about the customer’s vocabulary, about the names people use, not the ones you think they ought to use.

But naming your company, product, or service is an important exception. For once you’re in the position of pushing your name out there.

Here are ten things to keep in mind, some timeless, some new with the Internet:

1. Be memorable
   To say that most people today have the attention span of a flea is an insult to the flea. Your name is all that most people will remember, if they remember that. It is your most important piece of marketing, it will be used more than anything else in your business. Make sure it sticks.

   An important corollary - Avoid acronyms. “BGRB” might be short, it might be free of negative connotations, but it’s definitely not memorable, doesn’t respond to anyone’s needs, and very likely it’s already someone else’s acronyms. You want people to be able to say your name, don’t make it hard for them.

2. Respond to the needs of your customer
   If a customer buys your product or service, it will be because she needs it. I mean “need” in an emotional sense, as in Abraham Maslow’s hierachy of needs. Your name should reach out to your customers and remind them of either their dreams or their fears. Literalness is not necessary, evocation is often stronger. The best names are those evoke the benefits for the customers.

   Take Viagra (yes, you can tell everyone I told you to…) It has these elements:

   • Via, Latin for way or path (English cognate “viaduct”). Suggests forward forward progress.
   • Agra, Latin for field or farm (English cognate “agriculture”). Suggests fertility, fecundity.
   • Rhymes with Niagara, which is rushing, flowing, overspilling, powerful, etc.
   • Has more than a hint of Vir, Latin for man. (English cognate “virile”).

   This is a name that tells the customer what that little blue pill is going to do for him!

3. Avoid negative connotations
   I was once very entranced with the name “Better End” as a company name. I thought it was memorable and suggested a superior outcome. It took me a while to hear the sniggers from my friends as I tried it out on them. Finally I realized (because they told me, repeatedly) that “Better End” immediately triggered the thought “Nice Ass”. Although my ass is quite acceptable, thank you very much, I had to abandon the idea. It’s a name for a very different kind of business.
4. Get the .com domain name
   If people do manage to remember your name, don’t blow it by making them remember the domain extension as well. In the U.S. at least, people will take your name, append a “.com” at the end, and type it into their Internet browser. If they don’t find you, they may well just move on to the next possibility. Ideally, the domain name matches your name exactly. A domain name is never “close” — it’s either an exact match, or your customer goes to someone else’s website.

   I recommend searching for domain names at the same time you’re brainstorming for a business name — there’s nothing worse than coming up with a name only to find that someone else already has the domain name. DomainsBot is a excellent place to both brainstorm for names (it gives lots of great variations) and to check for domain name availability at the same time. (Disclosure: I have a financial interest in DomainsBot.)

   The one exception is when you are deliberately using the top-level domain as part of your name, for instance del.icio.us or blo.gs. These domain hacks work best for Internet-only businesses with savvy customers.

5. Make it short, preferably not more than two words .
   “My Really Stupendous Business in the USA” might sound good at first, but people will get tired of saying it, they will quickly forget one of the words, and they won’t be able to spell it (see next point).
6. Make it easy to spell
   This is a new consideration in naming, a direct consequence of the Internet, because, because people have to spell your name to find your website. In New York, there is a great cosmetics shop called Kiehl’s. Most New Yorkers know what “Kiehl’s” means when they see it. But ask them to type it, and I’ll guarantee that a huge percentage would get it wrong. They can recognize it, but they can’t reproduce it. On the Internet, you need a name that people can spell.
7. Watch out for alternate meanings
   You think it means one thing, but everyone else is rolling on the floor. See the Hilarious Domain Name Mispronouncings for some examples. Another one is just up the street, where some developers are turning the old O’Neill Building into luxury condos. They’ve chosen theoneillbuilding.com as their domain name. I’m afraid I will always think of it as The One Ill Building.
8. Make it phonetic
   It shouldn’t be pronounced differently than it’s spelled, and there shouldn’t be any ambiguity about the spelling. On the Internet, you may have (you hope to have) customers who don’t speak English as their first language. Avoid confusion and make your name easy to reproduce.
9. Make sure it reads well as one word (even if it isn’t)
   Practically, this means avoiding certain conjunctions of letters, such as two vowels. I can’t tell you how much trouble I had with customers who couldn’t spell my company’s domain name “nameengine.com” because of the two “e”s in the middle of the name. Remember that many people are going to think of your name as a domain name, so make your domain name easy to remember and reproduce.
10. Don’t copy
    If your business or product actually succeeds, you’ll rue the day you made it sound like someone else’s name. You’ll never be able to make it yours. Be original (but not kooky); creative (but not crazy).

There are examples of great names that don’t follow these rules, of course. Sometimes it’s because the company spent a ton of money injecting meaning into an empty container (an invented name, such as Xerox or Kodak). Sometimes the memorableness is so great that it overcomes other considerations (Fcuk). And sometimes people just use their own name, which can be a good strategy in some cases (Jen Bekman, Lauren Cerand).

Others have their own rules for naming. Here are some of the better links I’ve found:

• The New Rules of Naming from Seth Godin.
• A great list of naming links from Igor, a naming consultancy, as well as a taxonomy of names (functional, inventive, experiential, evocative), which they apply amusingly to a number of industries.
• Top Ten Tips for Corporate Naming from James Archer’s excellent blog.

Good luck!

Tags: naming, domain names, DomainsBot, domain hacks, Seth Godin, Igor, James Archer, Jen Bekman, Lauren Cerand, O’Neill Building, Viagra, Kiehl’s, Maslow, Top Ten

Posted by Antony in: Domains, Media + Marketing