The domain name is not important!
Contradictory to what many other websites say, I am going to be radical and say that the domain name is not important. As many others (probably), when I was looking for a domain name, I searched on google.com for information how to select a "good domain name". The search result was overwhelming, I got some useful (or were they really useful?) tips on what a domain name should look like, and many websites said something along "The domain name is critical for your success on the Internet" (the statement may be somewhat different, but the meaning was always the same). As a reference, this is roughly what other websites say that your domain name should look like:
- The domain name should be short.
- The domain name should be easy to remember.
- The domain name should be hard to misspell.
- The domain name should be related to your business name or products you sell.
- You should have a .com domain name.
- (The domain name can be used to index your website)
For a long time, I have been thinking about this. Who/what says that the domain name is important? Or that you must have a so called "good domain name"? What makes up a "good domain name"? When I started writing this blog entry, I went back to the websites I had been looking at, to see what sources they have, what research the author had done to come to the conclusion of what makes up a good domain name, and why it is to important for online business. The results of my study is interesting, none of the authors gives any information why they had come to this conclusion.
Who made up these guidelines? When did it happen (unfortunately, articles published online seldom have a date when it was published)? Does it apply to today?
As you have probably already figured out, I am going to say that these guidelines are useless today. Or, they are not useless; they have some value, which I will explain later, but they sure are not important for everyone.
Let's first look at #1 to #4. They all assume that the visitor will type the domain name in the address bar of their browser. Do people do that? From my own small research on how people find websites, they use a search engine or come from websites linking to your website. In the process from indexing the website, to the visitor entering the website from the search result, the length of the domain name is not important, no human need to remember the domain name (and a computer is good at remembering it :-), and there is no room for anyone to misspell the domain name. The domain name just isn't used. The same apply when people click a link on another website.
But what if your visitors do not come from a search engine or other websites; do you need to take #1 to #4 into consideration? Well, from where will your visitors come from? Obviously, if you do offline advertising (TV, newspapers, etc.), people will need to remember your domain name, and #1 to #4 sure apply. But how many of all million websites run offline advertising campaigns? Do you?
How do you keep people coming back to your website? Is the domain name important? To answer this, we have to ask us this question: Why do people come back to a website? Is it because the domain name is cool and follows the guidelines above? Or is it because the website is useful, fun and/or important to the visitor? The answer is obvious, it is the latter. If people like your website, they will bookmark it. Or if they do not bookmark it, they will use the address bar to type the domain name. Fortunately, most (all?) web browsers today are user friendly, and help the user with the domain name when they start writing it. This means that the first part of the domain name must be somewhat easy to spell and remember. But, this does not mean that the name you purchase must meet this, look at the example in the picture below. What says you must start your domain with www? Why not use some easy-to-remember word?
As a last resort, the visitor will use a search engine to find back to your website.
Compare this to how it works offline? People don't go to Company A instead of Company B because Company A has a cool name (and also lousy customer service and high prices). People will go to the company that offers the best customer service, and the lowest prices; the name is not important. Why would it be different online? Or in other words, if you don't have a cool, good domain name, you sure can make it cool, easy-to-remember, and good. If people like your website, people will find their way to your website and they will remember your domain name.
#5 is something that I will have to agree with, in some degree. The discussion for #1 to #4 applies to this as well, but a .com domain name has some advantages prior other top level domains. If a user types a word (without any TLD) into their web browser, some web browser tries to connect to the website with the .com TLD first, and then try other TLDs. Internet Explorer 7.0 does not do this, but earlier versions did. This did have some effect to the number of visitors, but I would say that it is/was minor. Today, people are advised to not go to unknown website, which means that guessing domain names is something that will cease to occur, and that is probably also why Internet Explorer does not do it anymore.
Anyhow, .com is a well known TLD, and people feel comfortable with this TLD. This will be important for certain web business. But, we should also not forget that a .com TLD may actually decrease "good traffic" (visitors who does not cost money/not buy things). If you have a web business in a certain country, say Sweden, and you target the Swedish market, it will of course be more favorable to have a .se TLD.
As for #6, which I have in parentheses above; this statement is pure speculation and not in any way true (or we do not know if it is true?). Companies like google.com do not disclosure their ranking algorithms; hence we cannot know if the domain name is used in the ranking. Search engines must give relevant hits to its users and people care less about the domain name, and care more about the content (if the search engine does not give relevant hits, people will not use that search engine anymore). Based on this, I think that search engines puts a very low (if any) weight on the domain name. Anyone can buy a domain name (if they have the money) that matches a keyword, but not anyone can meet the standards of a good website.
Conclusion
The domain name is not important. If your website is useful, fun and/or interesting, people will not care about the domain name. It is the content, customer service, prices (all depending on what kind of website you run) that are important, not the domain name. A "good domain name" may help you in the beginning, and certainly does not do any harm, but it is not a guarantee for a success, nor a requirement for a success.
If you already have an established name (used offline), it of course is a good idea to use the same domain name. In other occurrences, the domain name may also be important, for example if your domain name will be used offline.
Evaluate how a "good domain name" looks like for you. As with everything published on the Internet (and everywhere else), it is not a works-for-everyone solution. In almost all situations, it has to be generalized.
Published 2006-12-31 17:00 GMT+0100 by Kristofer Gafvert