To help your Web business flourish, you want to pick a domain name that will:
•be easy for Web searchers to find
•help market your product or service
•serve as a strong trademark, so competitors won't be able to use it or something similar, and
•be free of legal conflicts with other trademarks.
This article explores strategies for meeting these sometimes contradictory goals.
There's one consideration you can't get around: Domain names are limited to 26 characters,
including the .com part. If you try to register or reserve a name that is too long, you'll be directed to
provide a shorter version.
One Website, Many Domain Names
It's an unfortunate but inescapable fact that a domain name that satisfies one of the goals listed
above may sabotage another. For example, a domain name that gets lots of people to your website
quickly may make a crummy trademark. Take coffee.com; it may be an excellent domain name,
because many people who are looking for coffee vendors online are likely to type the word coffee
into their browsers. But coffee.com wouldn't qualify as a trademark for a coffee-related website,
because the word coffee in that context is generic it describes the product itself. So if your website
were named coffee.com, you wouldn't be able to do much about goodcoffee.com, blackcoffee.com,
columbiancoffee.com or cupofcoffee.com. But if you named your coffee website something like
javadelights.com, you would have an easier time of chasing away anything that was similar in sight,
sound or meaning. Coffee.com or javadelights.com? What a choice.
Fortunately, you can have the best of both worlds you can claim several domain names and route
them all to a single website. In fact, you can have an unlimited number of domain names leading to
your unique website. This is because underneath every website lurks a set of numbers (your
Internet Protocol, or IP, address) that identifies your unique location on a particular Internet server.
Your Internet service provider can set up a system that routes multiple domain names to your IP
address, and so to your website.
The only factor limiting how many domain names you can use to bring users to your particular
website is cost. NSI currently charges $70 to register a domain name for a two-year period, so
registering ten domain names would cost only $700, a modest amount for many Internet startups.
Because Internet users vary in how they seek out goods, services and established businesses on
the Internet, the more bases you cover the better. So the owners of a coffee-related website might,
as an example, register cupofcoffee.com, coffeeyumyum.com and cupofjoe.com as well as
javadelights.com.
Another way to leverage a domain name is to create variations by adding words to the front of it,
with another dot.
If You're Already in Business
If you are launching a website as part of an existing business, you must first decide whether you
want to use the name of your business for at least one of your domain names. Most businesses do.
That's why you'll find apple.com, landsend.com, toysrus.com and so on.
The importance of a strong brand on the Internet can't be overstated. Strong national and global
competition for products and services online demands strong branding and a correlation between
brand and domain name in order to get customers to the right website.
For example, say you are looking for the website of Peet's Coffee & Tea, a well-known coffee
supplier. Rather than use a search engine to hunt for sites related to the terms "coffee" or "tea," you
probably would first just type "peets.com" into your browser. Your guess would be right, and you
would go right to the Peet's website. Had Peet's not used its brand name for its domain name, you
would have been at least temporarily diverted from your search. And if you share the general lack
of patience of many Internet users, you might have given up. By using its strong brand name for its
domain name, Peet's can rest assured that anyone looking for the brand will quickly end up at its
website.
Using the company name for your domain name also allows you to keep whatever goodwill you
have built in the name. Goodwill simply means the good relationship you have with your customers
because you provide exceptional service or a truly wonderful product.
You may decide, however, that a short, catchy and easy-
to-remember name is a good alternative
(or addition) to just using your existing business name. For example, the Collin Street Bakery in
Corsicana, Texas, sells fruitcakes and has for many years but when it came time to go online, the
owners chose fruitcake.com as their domain name.
Still another option is to use only part of your business name, or an abbreviated form of it, as your
domain name. (You're limited to 26 characters total, remember.) For example, Turners
Outdoorsman, a retail sporting goods store, uses turners.com; Motley Fool (investment advice)
uses fool.com, and Kelley Blue Book (wholesale and retail prices for used cars) is kbb.com. Ask
Jeeves, a well-known search engine, uses ask.com. Short domain names are generally preferable
to long ones, because many Internet users type the domain names into their browsers rather than
relying on their list of favorite or bookmarked sites, portals (Yahoo!, AOL), or special interest sites
that offer collections of links for parents, seniors, investors or other groups.
Of course, you may want to use another name altogether (like the bakery that chose fruitcake.com),
especially if your business name is long. For instance, a well-known bookstore chain in Northern
California called A Clean Well-Lighted Place for Books uses bookstore.com as its domain name.
And Finer Times Market Place, an antique dealer, uses classicwatch.com.
As mentioned, generic domain names make weak trademarks because they merely describe the
goods or services offered on the website (for example, healthanswers.com, drugstore.com,
coffee.com), but excellent domain names because they work to get people to the website. So,
depending on how well known your existing business name is, it may make sense to use two
names. Create a new and descriptive domain name, and use your existing business name both as
a second domain name and to sell goods or services on the website itself. The rest of this article
gives more tips on choosing a good name.
Generic Names
A generic term can make a great domain name, because lots of people are likely to find your site.
That's why domain names such as wine.com, furniture.com, pets.com and books.com were
snapped up long ago.
As a general rule, generic domain names work best when you can use the actual term without
modifiers or additional syllables. For instance, cars.com, drugs.com or coffee.com are the strongest
and best uses of these generic terms. Domain names like fastcars.com, coffeebeans.com or
bestdrugs.com aren't going to bring as many people to your site as the bare term would, but they're
still considered generic for trademark purposes, meaning you get the worst of both worlds an
ineffective domain name and no trademark protection, either. If someone has got there ahead of
you and is already using a key term by itself, consider adopting a classically distinctive domain
name that is, a name that is coined, arbitrary, fanciful, suggestive or flat-out clever.
If you're considering a generic domain name (and someone else hasn't grabbed it yet), think it over
before you decide to go with that name alone. As mentioned, having a generic name can certainly
make it easier for people to find you on the Web. But because the name is generic, you probably
will not have any trademark protection, and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office probably won't
register it. If you want to register your domain name as a national trademark, it must be distinctive
enough to distinguish your product or service from others in the marketplace. For example, if a
business names its new soft drink "Cola" and its website cola.com, it won't be able to register "cola"
as a trademark. That's because "cola" describes a group of carbonated soft drinks with cola
flavoring; it could refer to any of several brands of colas. But add "Shasta" to "Cola," and
shastacola.com qualifies as a trademark because it specifies one particular brand of cola on the
market. Other examples of terms that have always been generic are lite beer, super glue, softsoap,
matchbox cars and supermarket.
Ordinary or Common Names
Many excellent domain names are made up of ordinary words. Consider taxprophet.com. Nothing
remarkable about either tax or prophet, but put them together and you have a name with
considerable cachet. Another example, Webvan.com, is the website of a grocery delivery service.
There is nothing unusual about the words, but their combination is clever because it makes you
wonder what is being delivered and piques your curiosity.
But what about trademark protection for a name consisting of ordinary terms? Here are the basic
rules:
•If the overall name is distinctive, it will be protected as a trademark no matter how many ordinary
terms are used.
•You cannot claim ownership to the ordinary terms themselves, but only to the overall name. For
example, the owner of howstuffworks.com won't own "how" or "stuff" or "works," but will own the
entire name.
•If the ordinary terms are memorable in the context of the product or service (for instance, Apple in
the context of computers), the name will be considered distinctive. Common terms that consumers
have come, over time, to associate with the underlying product or service will also be considered
distinctive for example, bestbuy.com for retail electronic products. |
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