What about .cc, .tv, or .info and similar names? How many .cc or .tv web sites have you been to? Probably very few. And I think that is issue. Customers are conditioned to use .com but not .tv or .info. So you probably lose with a non-traditional name. I would avoid them unless there was something special I could work into name - equivalent of Amazon or Yahoo approach to being memorable because they aren't obvious or expected.

Good names probably aren't cute. www.countonshell.com and www.iflyswa (South West Airlines) are probably a little to hard to get into a customer's brain because they are a little too cute. Remember, most people are only going to hear name of your web site briefly, and only once or twice. Wouldn't they be easier to remember Southwest if they copied Continental (www.continental.com) or Delta (www.delta.com) and just used their own name? Names need to be straight forward and simple for customers to remember them.

Hyphenated names probably aren't as good as non-hyphenated names. For instance www.federated-fds.com (Federated Department Stores) would probably be stronger as just federated.com. And www.shop-4-savings.com is probably a harder to remember than shop4savings.com. The trend, if there is such a thing, is to use whole name as one name.

Some really good names come from retail sector. www.sears.com, www.jcpenny.com, www.maycompany.com really do protect and promote brand and are perfectly obvious and intuitively easy to find. If you hear it once on a radio commercial, see it once on a business card, you will never forget it.

You can find out what names are available at several locations including http://webhosting.yahoo.com and http://www.internic.net/whois.html and of course where ever you wish to register your web site name.

Comments on this article? Wanna talk about golf? Can you get me on to Augusta National? Contact me!

Jeff Gilman

jgilman@marketingforidiots.com

www.marketingforidiots.com

One experts' web site you should visit is www.swapsmarts.com. Swapsmarts has over 1400 experts and their range of expertise includes, in no particular order; cricket, mathematics, relationships, ecommerce, investing, writing, and astrology. And to think some people still don't believe free enterprise helps people. In researching this vignette, I visited www.askjeeves.com and asked Jeeves 'where can i become an expert'. (Jeeves doesn't care about capitalization, punctuation, or syntax. Unlike my editor, school teachers before him, parents before them, and so on.) Jeeves tells me I can become:

a volunteer wedding expert

an expert in anything in Greater Milwaukee area at www.asktheexperts.org,

a computer expert helping students at Stanford http://www-facilities.stanford.edu sg/expert.html,

a pole barn expert,

a travel expert, and my favorite

How to Make Extra Money as an Expert Witness from www.welldressedmonkey.com.

The lunacy aside, expert web sites are a good idea. They help solve classic problem in marketing - meeting people and getting leads. This problem will never go away but expert systems really do give you opportunity to get introduction.

Comments on this article? Have an extra plate at dinner table? Contact me!

Jeff Gilman

jgilman@marketingforidiots.com

www.marketingforidiots.com