- Part 4: Common Domaining Mistakes To Avoid II
Common Domaining Mistakes To Avoid (II)
• Website or Websites?
One of the biggest problems in the domain name world is that nouns can be plural—and its really hard for people to remember if your site is www.bigcake.com or www.bigcakes.com. Think about it. Without looking back, which example have I been using all along, cake or cakes? At this point, I’m not even sure I remember myself!
If you’re using a generic domain name or looking at generic domain names to purchase and resell, the plural problem can be a big problem. There’s not an easy solution to this, except to purchase both site. As a domain name entrepreneur, if you can buy www.bigcake.com and www.bigcakes.com and sell them as a package deal, you’re bound to make more money. The final user simply has to make one of the two redirect to the other.
You can use tracking sites to see if the plural or singular version gets more hits daily. In general, go with the plural. Even if the customer only wants to purchase one big cake, he or she is still more likely to type the plural, because you as a business will have more than one big cake option.
• Too Many Words to Remember
With your cake business, someone can easily remember to string together the words “big” and “cake,” but what if you buy the domain name www.ilikebigcakes.com? Trust me, many of your customers won’t remember if “I like big cakes” or “I make big cakes” or “I am backing big cakes” or just plain “big cakes.” You’ll lose customers to confusion.
You’ll also lose a sale with a domain name that uses your tagline. It’s nice if your cake business uses the slogan “We bake bigger cakes for less,” but www.webakebiggercakesforless.com is a bad idea. It’s too long to remember, for one thing, but also, remember that people are lazy and prone to typos. The longer your domain name, the more likely your customer is to make a typo and go to the wrong website. There are a few exceptions to this rule of course, like www.AsSeenOnTv.com, which sold for $5.1 million…but you’re very lucky if you find a deal like that.
For entrepreneurs, long names also come with the stipulation that you need a very special customer to purchase the name. Lots of people are going to be interested in www.AutoMechanic.com, but it might take awhile to find someone who likes your slogan and buys www.WeTuneYourCarForLess.com.
• We’re Number 1! Or was it One?
The last of the six domain name sins is to use numbers in your domain name. Do you and your sisters own the cake shop together and call it Three Big Cakes? It doesn’t matter—www.threebigcakes.com is not the best domain name you could use. Think of all of the customers you’ll be losing to www.3bigcakes.com. Not to mention the fact that your customers might forget how many sisters there are and type in www.Fourbigcakes.com.
You can to be careful especially with the numbers two and four, simply because they sound like the words to/too and for/fore. If you want to run a site called Back to Basics, your website might be www.back2basics.com, but half of your customers will type in the word “to” instead of the number. It’s not a good investment to deal with numbers, so just stay away.
