When I was a student in London, many years ago, I lived on King Street in Hammersmith. On that particular road, within a few hundred yards of one another was an optician by the name of Mr. Seymour and an Indonesian dentist by the name of Dr. Phang. This always tickled my funny-bone, and has stuck in my mind ever since. If the optician had been Mr. Smith and the dentist Mr. Jones they would never have caught my attention and they would certainly not have remained in my memory for all these years.
When it comes to selecting a Domain Name for your website, the name you choose must be one that immediately makes it clear to a visitor, and to the search engines, what you are offering. Those with famous personal names or well-known brand names simply use their fame (or notoriety) to promote their site. Most of us don’t have that particular advantage. The name we use must, therefore, tell people what they need to know about us and our business at a glance.
If you can find a way of incorporating both your personal name and your niche into the domain, that’s great. In many cases that will not be possible. It is your business, product, service or interest which must communicate itself to a degree which makes people want to explore your website.
Remember the marketer’s age-old mnemonic – AIDA! This stands for ATTENTION –INTEREST – DESIRE – ACTION. If you don’t get the first one right, ‘ATTENTION’, all is lost before you even start; very few will ever visit, let alone explore your website.
It’s always worth seeing what the opposition are doing by visiting a few websites and getting ideas from their domain names. Having a good look at what they are doing to keep visitors on their site is also worth a look too. A website should not just draw people in but give them interesting things to do whilst they are there; – the sales pitch should be just one of the things that visitors are faced with. If people actually ‘enjoy’ visiting your site they are much more likely to come back and much more likely to purchase what you have to offer.
It is very important to get the most targeted visitors to your site that you can. In many cases, their first knowledge of your site will come through a search engine so it is vital that the domain name makes them want to visit, makes them believe that you have what they are looking for.
So, what’s in a name? In the world of internet marketing, – a heck of a lot!