You have a paradigm-shifting idea. You think you have a chance to be the next Google or Wal-Mart or MacD.
You have a business plan ready. You have already talked to a few potential investors. And they are all interested. The only problem is the investors want to see your idea in action before committing to anything. They want you to bootstrap your concept. They want you to do all the ground work and get started.
And so you get started. You are now looking for a nice innovative name for your concept. You need to purchase a domain name that preferably ends with a .com. You need a website up and running. You need a blog. You need a nice web infrastructure in place.
Sounds familiar? This is a very common behavioral pattern among startup companies, especially non-tech. Software engineers turned entrepreneurs can put up their website, blog and all the necessary items in a couple of days. How do they do it so easily? Wherein, your web developer or technology partner charges you so much money and takes so long to complete the job?
Startups and aspiring entrepreneurs can really use a few tips in this arena.
Name of the website: You really have to be one of the luckiest person on earth, to register a .com domain name, that exists in the English Dictionary. The reason being, buying and re-selling online real estate [domain names] is a huge business. And most of you would be de-motivated instantly and might end up buying a domain name that ends with .in, .info, co.in, etc. No offence but .com names have its own charm.
But do we really need a domain name that is an official Oxford Declared English Word ?
Lets go back and re-evaluate. In this google-dominated world, having just a domain name is not going to get you anywhere. When your customer searches for you, your website should be there on the very top. And chances are that, your competitors have done their homework and already made their pages, search engine optimized. And if the name you choose is very generic, Google will fetch content that are not even remotely related to your product or service.
eg. Imagine an accountant starting a website indianaccountant.info. "Indian accountant" is a very generic name. Google probably would be giving us Wikipedia links rather than any particular website.
Instead, if you had chosen a brand name, that is a product of your imagination, something that cannot be found in a dictionary, you have a better chance of getting the domain name. Plus, if the name you have come up with is catchy [Remember Yahoo!], and since no one else in the world knows about the word, chances are that, Google will come up with a single result -your Webpage
All these, with the satisfaction of contributing a new word to the dictionary.
To be continued...
Sreelaj John is a Technology Evangelist and helps startups scale up their businesses. He founded iDuple with a vision to provide Startups and SMEs with world class software services.
He can be contacted at [email protected]
