Action Branding

Hittail started as "mylongtail" and then suddenly the name changed. I asked Mike Levin about this and he said:

Well, we’re big fans of Guy Kawasaki here, and have aptly taken his advice to heart about naming your company as something that works as a verb. One of the biggest public relations coups of our time is the addition of the term Googling to the Miriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary. We just can’t imagine people getting into the process of MyLongTailing. But HitTailing, we can see. You too can be a HitTailer.

So if your domain can be an action people may be more attracted to it. I think it might make the domain more memorable as well. And "memorable" gets tricky.

Broad Words

Early on, broad words or categories were used for domains. These are common-use words like "play" or "water". The problem is these are difficult to enforce a trademark on so your legal protections are limited. They also don’t really do much for your brand though they might help your identity.

For example, www.water.com is owned by DS Waters of America. Who is DS Waters of America? Well, they own Alhambra, Kentwood Springs, Crystal Springs and other well-known bottled water companies. Now the domain water.com might help with the identity (bottled water company) but what does it do for the brand? What is the impression created in your mind? When you think of water do you think of DS Waters of America?

Probably not.

A better domain would probably have been dswaters.com (which they do own and redirect to water.com).

Broad category domains are highly valued and sought after. They are also pretty much used up. And they can be very expensive. Usually they are purchased for their perceived value and bragging rights and it takes deep pockets to do this.

Made Up Words

Web services tend to make up a somewhat goofy sounding word like Etsy or Trulia. There’s a certain comfort in this. But this seems to only work for web-based businesses or for teen clothing stores. The name is what the brand is built on (think: Google).

A recent trend is to use the TLD (that’s the part after the domain name like .com or .net) to create a word. del.icio.us is the most successful example of this but it is very time-consuming to figure out the right combination of domain, sub-domain and TLD to get it right. And honestly, if your TLD isn’t among the commonly known .com, .net, .org crowd less-web-savvy types are likely to get confused. I have to wonder how many people type "del.icio.us.com".