INTRODUCTION / DON’T WASTE MORE TIME THAN YOU HAVE TO ON THE NAME OF A WEBSITE
The naming of a website is important (it can sum up what you do, be easy for audiences to remember, and so on) But it’s not that important. Is Google a great name ? I don’t think so. It’s not bad: it sounds OK, and it’s easy to remember. It’s, also, the sort of name that is vague in terms of what the company does (which means it doesn’t have to be tied down to being just a search engine). Aim for a good name (and, bottom line, a name that doesn’t have any negatives about it). But don’t forget the name is just part of what you’re trying to create. It’s easy to spend far too much time on the website name at the cost of your digital marketing strategy in general. Therefore decide how much time you’re going to devote to it – and stick to that!
WEBSITE NAMES WITH KEYWORDS / SEO
When the internet first took off, algorithmic search and SEO were particularly important. Not so much anymore. If your digital strategy is heavily dependent on SEO and being found in search engines then yes, website names with keywords is still a viable option. Perhaps, this works best with a purely functional site, i.e. where the audience doesn’t care at all about the look or feel of the website, they are just looking for specific information or already know exactly what they want to buy (cheap product perhaps i.e. no frills detergent).
– Hyphenated names. Domain names with hyphenated words can help search engines distinguish key words. But the value of this has been reduced fairly drastically. In the vast majority of cases, avoid hyphenated domain names!
– Deleted domains. Deleted domains can give an extra bit of search-engine ranking juice. You can find deleted domains on DeletedDomains.com. But, again, don’t forget that SEO, in general, isn’t as important as it once was (and think how many of the good names have gone, anyway). So the disadvantages of going down this route have increased considerably..
BRANDING / BUSINESS CONSIDERATIONS
So algorimic search and SEO aren’t as important as they once were. Search engines are much better now at sorting websites and website pages based on quality of content and relevancy of search. Also, social media has had a major impact on the way websites are found. Now it’s much more important to have a website name that is part of the overall branding/business strategy of the business, as opposed to a more narrow search engine / SEO focus.
Is your business always going to be niche (perhaps you’ve already decided to make a name for yourself as an expert in a niche business category). Or do you intend to expand your business into different types of products / services? If the latter, then you want to choose a name that is vague in meaning/connoation (i.e. Google). Even in a niche business, you don’t have to choose a business name that is too obvious. “Flickr“, for example, is fairly niche (photo sharing). But it doesn’t contain the word “photo” or “sharing” in it. In fact the name only has the merest hint (at least for me, and I’m being subjective here) that it is related to “photo sharing” at all. Actually, “Flickr” allows for a fairly niche service such as “photo sharing” but at same time, with this name, the company could, in theory, do lots of other things as well, i.e. video sharing and production, media production and so on.
BE CREATIVE
A lot of the good names have now gone – both keyword/generic names such as cars.com or creative/emotive names such as wave.com or dream.com.
But there are still lots of good names out there if you are creative. For example:
- Drop letters (or switch letters around / add an extra letter / double up letters etc ..) . I guess that when Flickr were thinking of a name they thought of Flicker, but Flicker was gone (?) So they just removed the “e”. In fact, Flickr (without the “e”) makes you focus on the name even more. Perhaps you wouldn’t think so much about it like this if the website wasn’t successful. But it is. And “Flickr” without the “e” doesn’t, I don’t think, lose out in anyway because it is a letter short. If anything, you could argue, it gains (plus think how much money and time they would have saved from having to try and buy “Flicker”).
- Join words together. You can join different words together to make a name, for example, “Four” and “Square” for Foursquare, Youtube and so on.
- Rolls off tongue / sounds good. Some domain names work well because of the way they roll off the tongue / sound good, TechCrunch, for example.
- Make up a word. Make up a word such as Aqka (leading, international digital agency – short name and sounds quite good).
- Make logo out of the name. You can also make a logo out of the name. I don’t think “lijit” is a great sounding name (that’s my subjective view, anyway). It’s OK. It’s not terrible. What’s good about it is that it is short. It’s quite easy to remember. But what they’ve done is make a kind of logo out of the name (it’s not a great logo – but it’s good enough to make the name look a bit more interesting, at least). The name is far from perfect. But the important thing is that it works – it is good enough (the really important thing is that you have a great business model – the name doesn’t have to be as good as the business model ..).
In order to help you come up with good names, try some brainstorming. The key to brainstorming is to come up with as many names as possible. Don’t be critical of them until you have a lot written down. Once you have a lot down, you can then check which ones have been taken. And the ones that haven’t been taken you can then think about them more, and see if you can come up with similar names.
You can use a Thesarus to help come up with names. Or a website such as Nameboy. Read a lot (anything) before and during the naming of the website. This will help get your brain focused on linguistics. Read some nonsense poetry (both for improving linguistics as well as creative-thinking). And so on.
Of course, how creative you are in your name-selection, all depends on the type of business you run. If your business is focused on media, arts, entertainment, social media for example, then it’s more important to find a name with some kind of human connection (whether it be slightly emotive / funny / enigmatic and so on). But if your business is focused on, for example, engineering or finance, then your approach may be a bit different.
DOMAIN NAMES and TRADEMARKS
Need to be careful about choosing a domain name that is similar to a trademark (or similar to an existing, competitor’s domain name that hasn’t been trademarked). Also, you consider, perhaps, selecting a domain name that you could go on to get trademarked. Obviously, a trademarked domain is great. But you might have to sacrifice a good name for an inferior one if going for a name you want to get trademarked. This is a subjective topic. Whether you choose to go for a trademark or not, you’ll have to weigh up the pros and cons, carefully. For more information regarding the legality of trademarks and trademarks in general, you can visit, for example, the US Patent and Trademark Office or the UK Intellectual Property Office (or do a search for the patent and trademark office for your country if your business is located in a different part of the world). For independent advice, there are internet lawyers focused on this topic.
DOMAIN NAMES – MISCELLANEOUS
- Short or long names. This is a common question when it comes to naming a website. The important thing to consider is: does it roll of the tongue nicely and is it easy to remember (as well as, of course, fitting, nicely, your brand and business goals). Whatever works. But it seems that it’s often more effective to use a shorter name.
- Buying a domain name at auction. You can buy a domain name at auction, for example, GoDaddy.
- Register similar names. Don’t forget to register names that are very similar to yours, in order to prevent competitors using those names. Also, don’t forget to register domain name suffixes (even if you’re not going to use them) for the domain you’re going to use. It’s up to you how many, but the most popular ones that people register for this purpose are: info, net, org, co.uk (and there are others).
- Buy the domain name for a few years (as opposed to just one year) – this can have an effect on SEO.
- .com or a country domain suffix (i.e. co.uk). Country domain suffixes can have an effect on SEO. Also, a country domain suffix helps customers identify straight away that your business is country-related/specifc. If your business is country-specific, and you don’t intend to expand to other countries, then this is an option (but .com is still a perfectly viable option in this case as well – not forgetting that some people are just more impressed by .com). But if you’re unsure / you want to attract some foriegn traffic as well / thinking of expanding abroad then .com may be the more viable option.
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Marc Andreesen – Netscape founder and Mosaic co-author
- There’s always more demands than there’s time to meet them, so it’s constantly a matter of trying to balance them.
Jeff Bezos - Amazon founder
- There are two ways to extend a business. Take inventory of what you’re good at and extend out from your skills. Or determine what your customers need and work backward, even if it requires learning new skills. Kindle is an example of working backward.
- If you do build a great experience, customers tell each other about that. Word of mouth is very powerful.
- We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It’s our job every day to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little bit better.
- What we want to be is something completely new. There is no physical analog for what Amazon.com is becoming.
- A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn reputation by trying to do hard things well.
- What’s dangerous is not to evolve.
Mark Cuba – various internet interests
- It doesn’t matter how many times you fail. It doesn’t matter how many times you almost get it right. No one is going to know or care about your failures, and neither should you. All you have to do is learn from them and those around you because… All that matters in business is that you get it right once. Then everyone can tell you how lucky you are.
- Make your product easier to buy than your competition, or you will find your customers buying from them, not you.
- In business, one of the challenges is making sure that your product is the easiest to experience and complete a sale.
Caterina Fake - Flickr co-founder
- Had we sat down and said, ‘Let’s start a photo application,’ we would have failed. We would have done all this research and done all the wrong things.
Seth Godin – internet start-up, Squido0 founder, blogger, speaker
- Finding new ways, more clever ways to interrupt people doesn’t work.
Reed Hastings – CEO Netflix
- Once you subscribe, our interest is purely your happiness.
- If the Starbucks secret is a smile when you get your latte, … ours is that the Web site adapts to the individual’s taste.
Reid Hoffman - LinkedIn founder
- Your product must scale intelligently.
- A product needs to be sufficiently innovative to distinguish itself from the pack, but not so forward thinking as to alienate the user.
- Good ideas need good strategy to realize their potential.
- Everyone is now an entrepreneur, whether they recognize it or not.
Steve Jobs – Apple Co-founder and CEO
- Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.
- I think we’re having fun. I think our customers really like our products. And we’re always trying to do better.
- You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new.
- Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.
Pierre Omidyar – eBay founder/chairman
- When I started eBay, it was a hobby, an experiment to see if people could use the Internet to be empowered through access to an efficient market. I actually wasn’t thinking about it in terms of a social impact. It was really about helping people connect around a sphere of interest so they could do business.
- I was just pursuing what I enjoyed doing. I mean, I was pursuing my passion.
Eric Schmidt – Google Chairman / CEO
- The Internet is really about highly specialized information, highly specialized targeting.
- When the Internet publicity began, I remember being struck by how much the world was not the way we thought it was, that there was infinite variation in how people viewed the world.
- The Internet is the first thing that humanity has built that humanity doesn’t understand, the largest experiment in anarchy that we have ever had.
Jerry Yang – co-founder of Yahoo!
- Now we’re seeing services and applications. This has been one of the promises the Internet has offered for a long time — the consumer can really be the programmer.
- I think that it’s always possible to have a great company if you have great ideas. I will say that since the web has become more commercialized, it also takes some good financial resources to build a great business, but as I always say, you have to have the idea first.
Todd Wagner - Broadcast.com co-founder
- We think we can lower the cost, increase the revenue and realize that the customers are in charge.
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This is an introduction to Ryan McCulloch, in particular, to provide people with some images, and links to, his fantastic stop-motion animation work. What I like, in particular, is that his work has, character and personality.
Ryan is a freelance illustrator and animator based in Florida. He has been an independent animator for the last 10 years, creating his own animation films. His clay-animated shorts have been screened at the National Gallery Of Art in Washington D.C. and appeared in many film festivals around the world. He has produced four short films for HBO and HBO and the HBO family, been a judge at film festivals such as The Palm Springs International Short Film Festival, and more. He is a graduate of the Academy Of Art University in San Francisco with a Bachelor Of Fine Art in Illustration, and spent some time studying art and history in Florence, Italy.
Will be doing a Questions & Answers with Ryan, shortly.
Critter Song 2007
Watch here
Fox & Calf: The Fridge
Watch here
Happiness 2006
Watch trailer
- “Ryan shows his growth with this, his most sophisticated, compelling work yet.” -Bruce Fessier, Palm Springs Desert Sun
Links:
RyanMcculloch.com
Ryan’s blog
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The Power of the Creative-Thinking Brainstorming Session
What’s the big deal about creative-thinking? Big deal about brainstorming, for example?
One good answer: Twitter was born out of a brainstorming session. In the podcasting company Odeo in 2006 to be more precise.
If a business and cultural phenomon like Twitter can come out of a brainstorming session, what can brainstorming and creative-thinking do for you and your organization?
About brainstorming
- Brainstorming is focused on coming up with lots of ideas within a certain period of time.
- You can do it on your own or in a group.
- The key to successful brainstorming is to be non-critical. Any idea is valid no matter how silly it might appear at first. People are free to talk (but within reason as there is only so much time and there will be competition for people to be heard).
- An important approach is that great ideas often start off as “silly” ones. The “silly” idea might turn out on its own to be a great idea. Or it could form the basis of a potential great idea. Or it could help create another idea that, in turn grows into a great idea. And so on.
- Be clear, from the beginning, about the problem you are trying to resolve. The nature of the problem might change as the session develops (the problem, for example, might turn out to be too challenging at the beginning).
- The facilitator can ask questions to get things, and to keep things, going.
- The best brainstorming sessions occur when everyone is relaxed, the facilitator is original in approach (but, always, following the general rules of brainstorming) and is good at stimulating others in general.
“It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to be always right by having no ideas at all” – Edward de Bono (the 20th/21st centuries creative-thinking guru).
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