Does Domain Name Matter

Everyone is spending crazy amount of money to buy a domain name for themself or for their business presence online. A fair amount of research goes to identify a good domain name, which is the starting point for any new business. Did I say good domain name? Ah you won't settle for anything that is good, well, I withdraw my words, I know you are looking for "The Best Domain Name" and you would not settle for anything less.

On similar topic I had posted my views "Does Domain Name Matter" a little while back. Today I am revisiting the topic with a new perspective. When you started your business, with no office in prime location with primary contact as your landline or cellular number and an email id that was most probably on usa.net or yahoo (gmail has been in existence for relatively lesser time). How did you go about marketing your services or business to others? What were you marketing then? What does a customer expect to get from you? In all probability, if you are a small business owner, I believe you never paid attention or huge sum of money to invest in a fancy telephone number, you just advertised what you had. That is it.

No one was coming to you because you called your house / office with a fancy name. Your customers came to you because you provided a service, and that you were good at providing that service as compared to your competitors. A business card was more than enough to provide details on how to contact you; your postal address for any snailmail - letter, a number to send and receive fax and a contact number to speak with you. Very little attention was paid if you were conducting your business from your garage or in a posh location. With advent of internet, somehow everyone has lost track how business was conducted a few years ago. Amazing amount of money is being wasted to get a short and sweet domain name but is it really that important to have a short and easy to remember domain name? Isn't the service that you provide more important than easy to type in URL address?

Times have changed, so has technology. Just as few people have the good habit of storing your business card, many and believe me -- there are many intelligent people who know how to use bookmarks and favourites to store the links they intend to visit. Browsers are changing with time and give you option to autofill just as you type first few letters in address bar. There are also options like Google History which would track all sites that you have visited, just in case you don't remember where all you have been.

Let's also look how you used to get visitors to your office / business a few years back -- Advertizing has not changed despite improved technology, and brand has to be built, just by getting a good domain name doesn't guarantee you get the traffic that is important to you. You may get a million hits because of your domain name, but if you can't convert even one into a customer for yourself -- is it worth the investment?

A recent study indicates that about 64% of internet users type Google.com or Yahoo.com to search for information they are looking for, and most likely if you visit your site statistics you would realize that majority of hits to your website has come from search engines -- which showed your link not because of your good domain name, but because your website had content that was worth to share and display to the person who searched.

Having said that, I still would not advocate you to buy a domain name that is not realted to your business or hobby or profession. It should and it must be related, it serves no purpose that a technology company buys a domain name like gettherightshoes.com, however there is no point to feel low if you didn't get besttechnologycompany.com domain to yourself.

Check Alexa ranking for top 10 sites -- Yahoo.com leads the list, followed by Google, Youtube, Windows Live, Microsoft Network, MySpace, Wikipedia , Facebook and Blogger in descending order. How many of these do you associate with business that they are doing? How is Google related to search and youtube for video sharing? The name doesn't really give a clue, but despite that you do know that if you wish to search -- you have choice from Yahoo, Google and Windows Live. Why do you remember that? When you have a need to remember, you would remember, that is why Wikipedia (spelling isn't really that easy to remember -- but you do, and in case you don't you actually go to google, type wiki and search) gets hits from direct and indirect (search engine driven traffic).

So friends, go ahead and build a brand, the name is important, but more then the name, it is the content that is the MOST IMPORTANT resource that you should be investing in, in terms of time and money. Any domain name would serve the purpose just like any building can serve as your office, as long as you stock the material that people want from you.

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