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Naming your Internet startup
“Whats in a name ?” So thought Shakespeare in his play “Romeo and Juliet”.
If only he were alive today to see how woefully wrong he is.
Finding a suitable, appropriate and catchy name for your Internet startup can be an immensely challenging task. Unlike brick & mortar stores, a startup name means everything in the Internet world - the Internet address, the brand, the email - everything. Screw it up and it may be very difficult to change it later.
Getting the right idea is a big challenge - no doubts about it. However, once the idea has been conceived, you’re faced with the next hurdle - naming your startup. You can spend as much time or as little time as you want on this task.
Here are a few guidelines that you’ll need to consider while searching and deciding a name for your startup:
- Is this name simple and unambiguous ? Is there a good chance that the name can be spelled differently ?
I say this from my own experience. A lot of folks mistakingly spell my blog as “Startup Duniya” and search for the same in Google. When I bought my domain, I hadnt put a lot of thought to this possible ambiguity. In hindsight, I might have probably opted for an alternative. To an Internet startup, this can very well mean difference between survival and death.
- Is the domain name available ?
This is by far one of the biggest factors that impacts the naming process and makes it so challenging and often times, frustrating. As soon as you think of a name, odds are 50 to 1 that the domain name has already been taken.
- Â Is the name simple and easy to remember ?
A lot many times, a website - url is verbally recommended to friends and family. Would it be easy for them to distinctly make out the name and recollect it easily later ? If it isnt easy to distinctly recollect the name, it’s already costed you a lost user. At times its easy to overlook this word of mouth usage while considering a name.
- Is the name short and concise ?
The longer the name, the more chances of a user screwing up the url. ‘BBC’ is way better than ‘British Broadcasting Corp.’.
- Â Is the name - trademark already taken ?
To avoid legal hassles later, its important that you verify for any conflicts related to trademark, copyright and branding
- Dont pick a generic name like “Indian cooking recipes” (if you get the domain, that is). From a branding perspective, it’d be a nightmare. However, this can be a debatable point.
- Try to be original and innovative without flunking any of the above listed points.
‘Flickr’ set on an entire trend and brought us the genre of vowel-dropped-names. With some clever sub-domain naming hack, ‘Delicious’ showed how lack of an available domain can be overcome.
Of course, if you are sitting on a pile of cash, you can afford to ignore all of the above and hire a naming consultant and also buy that expensive, prized domain.
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9 Responses to “Naming your Internet startup”
Pranav you made me remember the month-long brainstorming i did with my team to choose our name
And the result was worth it!
Our business idea is to provide an Internet portal to the city community for its day-to-day collaboration which could help reduce its everyday local commuting.
The constraints for choosing the brand were kept really strict..
- it should unambiguously convey the concept to the reader/listener/viewer, because we believe that businesses where customers are already educated (food, apparel, cosmetics etc.) can have exotic or alluding or cool names, but not us. Customer education should start with the brand itself.
- Since our ambition is to expand in 30 cities across India and cater to the urban middle class, the brand should be unambiguously recognized by non-English speakers of all Indian states (this was the toughest one!).
- it should meet the other obvious constraints of domain names like as-short-as-possible, easy to spell etc.
We did a survey among family and friends asking them to rank their choices among 30 options.. (by the way NONE of our potential competitors in the city portal domain today meet the above criteria!)
and the result was “CITYWALA”
interesting read…lots of good points to keep in mind…thanks for the insight!
Hi Pranav,
it’s amazing that your blog came just at the right time when we ourselves r dying to find a good and relevant domain name for our website.
Good work done! thanks…i’ll reply to u if i find a gud domain name :-D.
Yes, right timing! I am soon starting a new website promoting brand/company naming services with .com domain availability. I am thinking of pricing approx $2000 for the name plus the .com and .net domains. Do you guys think the pricing is right?
The names won’t be like Nixtr, Fixtr, Sextr or Juxtr - I promise!
@rabi - good luck with the search
@ramesh - if this is from the Indian market, you might want to do a trial and error approach to get the pricing correct. Indians are bargain hunters and they should really see value in the $2k they’ll spend. good luck with your company and let us know your experience.
Ramesh, will your company keep suggesting domain names until the clients like one? What if they don’t like any of the suggested names? Just curious!
@ Pranav: Yes, Indians bargain big time. Know that with experience
I am only focusing on a global market and will be taking up only serious enquiries. The challenge is also not to sound like a Domain name seller!
@ Nishi: My plan is to have a site and list some initial brand names upfront. Customers can either chose them or order for a customized name. Some non-refundable advance money needs to be charged and the number of options needs to be limited. Or else it’s going to be a never ending process.
Movie MAZIC: Wondering why AZIC in MaZIC and not AGIC because AZIC stands for A-Z of Indian Cinema.
@ Maya: or is it because that’s how it’s pronounced in half the country?