•be short
•be vigorous
•be easily spelled, and
•mean nothing. Some other good advice is to make your domain name:
•pronounceable
•memorable, and
•legally available (see Chapter 5).
The key to creating a distinctive domain name is cleverness. Coined words such as Exxon are the ultimate in clever because they are created from thin air. But you don't need to make up new words to have a distinctive name. As we have seen, distinctive names often consist of ordinary words used creatively and in an unusual context or words that evoke fanciful associations. You may also want to use ordinary words that indirectly suggest what the underlying product or service is, without describing it outright.
While it may seem that all the good names have been taken, there is in fact a large supply. But like diamonds, they usually aren't just lying on the ground for the taking; a little mining, cutting and polishing may be required to find them and make them shine. Some possible sources:
•new combinations of existing words such as ubid.com for auctions, smartmoney.com for personal finance calculators, buyitnow.com for a retail site
•combinations of word roots, like intelihealth.com for health services, bibliofind.com or alibris.com for book finding services, travelocity.com for travel services, invesco.com for investment services
•distinctive foreign words such as Sirocco.com or Soleil.com
•abandoned names that are no longer in use, but that were once famous. They may bring a certain cachet to your product or service if their image corresponds to the one you want to project. If you do discover a name you know was in use at one time, find out whether or not it is now available for your use by doing the sort of search described in Chapter 6.
Finding Unclaimed Marks
One online subscription service claims to have an inside track to domain names that were not renewed after their two-year registration expired. The service provides a list of these recently expired registrations on a weekly basis for a $20 subscription fee. While we don't endorse this service or provide any guarantees, such a list might provide a fruitful source of domain name ideaYou can reach the service at www.unclaimeddomains.com.
If you do decide to use one of the names on this list, make sure that the name isn't still being used as a trademark on or off the Web. As with other domain name choices you may make, you should definitely subject your choice to a trademark search, as described in Chapter 6.
1. Coined Words
The best way to make a mark distinctive is to make it up. Some examples include chumbo.com (an online software store), kagi.com (a payment processing service for e-commerce businesses) and pandesic.com (an e-commerce company). The keys to a coined domain name are making it easy to spell and appealing to both eye and ear, or at least suitable to the image you want to project for your product or service. To avoid coined words that may evoke unintended images (for example, runslo.com for software that is supposed to speed up your Internet access), run your choices by a variety of people and note their responses to the sound and appearance.
Wholly new, made-up words have no meaning and probably not even any connotation, other than the ones you will create with your marketing activities. That means they require extensive, often expensive, marketing efforts to get established as product or service identifiers in the first place. Without that, your domain name won't mean anything to the general public. That's a major drawback for a small business with limited capital.
Opting for a coined word has a second drawback. New combinations that sound and look good—that is, ones that are marketable and not already in use—are becoming harder to develop. Despite our rich Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, Norman and Latin linguistic heritage, with over 200,000 new trademarks being registered each year, the well of coinable words is fast being drained.
2. Names That Suggest, But Don't Describe
In general, marketing folks favor suggestive names because they evoke an image or idea that customers are likely to associate with the product or service being marketed. A name is usually considered suggestive when you need to take at least one more mental step to figure out what is being suggested. Here are some examples:
•ask.com, the domain name for the Ask Jeeves search engine, effective because it suggests answers, just what you want a search engine to do
•peapods.com, the domain name for the Pea Pods baby things site, suggests maternity things
•peapod.com, a website featuring online grocery ordering
•Salon.com, an online magazine, suggests a place for the exchange of sophisticated commentary
•eHow.com, information made available in a crisp "how to" format
•Travelocity.com, a travel services website, suggests travel and speed
•nextMonet.com, an online contemporary art gallery that suggests undiscovered great artists
•Gazoontite.com (for allergy information and supplies) that suggests the ritualistic and widespread use of the German "Gesundheit!" (health) when someone sneezes
•Getsmart.com, a debt consolidation and loan service, suggests the quality of savvy, something that folks who have debt problems may aspire to, and
•wingspanbank.com (a national online bank) suggests a far-flung presence, something innovative in the banking industry.
Although suggestive names may require some marketing to become broadly identified with a product, they are usually easier to promote than coined names because they already connote something you want to associate with your product or service. Some name consultants argue that suggestive names are the most useful because the images they evoke make them very effective marketing tools. But it may take lots of thought to come up with one that's appropriately evocative, suits your customer base and hasn't been taken. Again, test your ideas out on a number of people to see if they get the message you hope to send.
3. Fanciful Words
Fanciful names are fun to invent because you can use any term, or combination of terms, that do not in fact describe your service or product in any way. The trick is to think up a term that is interesting, memorable and somehow appropriate, without literally describing some aspect of your service or product. For example, Yahoo.com and ragingbull.com (stock market and investment information site) are both fanciful names that would be easy to protect as trademarks.
Clearly, consumer responses to these types of names are subjective and intuitive. If you create a fanciful or arbitrary mark, try to consider all the possible evocations that the name may have—and make the most of them.
4. Arbitrary Words
Words that are descriptive or ordinary when associated with one product or service can be very strong for another. For example, Apple.com is distinctive and legally strong as a trademark because apples have nothing to do with computers, but Swingsets.com for a site that sells children's play equipment is weak because it literally describes the product. Similarly, Facets.com is a distinctive name for an online clothing store, but would be mundane, ordinary and non-distinctive as the name for an online gem store.
5. Common Terms in Uncommon Arrangements
Ordinary words, in unusual arrangements, can make distinctive names. For example, Magicaldesk.com has weak components—magical and desk are both common terms, but combine them for secretarial services, and the entire name becomes more distinctive and therefore more easily protected.
When evaluating a phrase to see whether it's a strong or weak trademark, it is the overall impression that counts. The fact that some of the elements are ordinary won't matter if the phrase as a whole has an original ring to it. For example, Speedy Turtle Delivery Service is memorable for the contrast of speed and turtle. This makes it distinctive, despite the fact that Speedy Delivery Service without the Turtle would be purely descriptive and so a weak trademark. Especially if you shortened the entire business name to speedyturtle.com, you would have a very distinctive domain name.
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