What is a brandable domain name?

As online business proliferates, it’s becoming more difficult than ever to come up with a brand name and domain that isn’t taken. Considering a company name has a long life, it’s surprising how many businesses give very little thought to choosing one. Coming to the right decision can involve factors such as consumer psychology, availability of domain names, the need to be different, keyword searches and more. It sounds complex, but often the more complex the naming process, the simpler the resulting brand name is.

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Characteristics common to brandable domains

-User friendliness – Word or words that are easy to say, spell and type and don’t look like a jumble of letters when strung together in a URL. No abbreviations, aural ambiguities or jargon.
-Credibility – It sounds professional and trustworthy. Adding words such as ‘best’ or ‘quality’ can have a negative effect.
-Uniqueness – It’s something that cannot be confused with the competition.
-Relevance – It relates to your service or product, even if it’s not described directly.
-Memorability – It is catchy and a name that people will remember.
-Brevity – It is short, ideally no more than two words.

Tips on choosing your brand name and domain

Look at it from the customer’s perspective. Is it easy to remember and search for? Consistency across your business name, domain name and company handle for social media will help customers to find you.

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Use the standard domain suffixes, such as .com, .co.uk, .net or .org. If the domain name is not available on these suffixes, there’s likely something out there already that could be mistaken for your business if you used the newer suffixes such as .web, .online, .tech and so on. Besides, customers tend to trust the more common suffixes and are more likely to assume those websites have been longer established. You can search the availability of domain names and their suffixes through services such as https://www.names.co.uk/domain-names .

Buy domain names with multiple suffixes, particularly the main ones. Then, redirect them to your main website (the website with the .com suffix). It is important not to replicate your content on the domains with other suffixes as this can harm your website ranking.

Consider hiring a brand specialist to help you through the process. For such a fundamental decision, it is well worth the investment.