Re: Best practices in corporate/product branding and domain names

[Bill Swallow <techcommdood -at- gmail -dot- com>]

I just went through all of this last year with
http://globalscript.com. The domain was taken, and we'd been using a
hyphen, but the hyphen is not memorable nor does it "flow" well, so we
bought the domain from the owner (after much haggling). I mean, do you
want to say "check out orange software dot com" or "check out orange
hyphen software dot com"? I think you'll find orangesoftware.com or
something similar will work well for you. But, also consider the
length of the domain name.

Also also... ;) Consider multiple domains that redirect back to
"home", whatever that may end up being.

On Fri, Jan 20, 2012 at 11:21 AM, Anonymous <anonymous -at- techwhirl -dot- com> wrote:
> I'm hoping you can offer advice about the current best practices in
> corporate/product branding as it relates to Web domain names.
>
> Background: Successful startup with a primary software product, which we'll
> call "Orange Software" or just "Orange." The product name is what we want
> to build the brand around because it's flexible, succinct, memorable, and
> more; ideally, we'd be able to acquire the www.orange.com domain, but its
> not available. As a result, we seem to have two camps about how to
> approach this
> branding-domain issue:
>
> One camp suggests that we build the brand around "Orange" but that we focus
> the domain name on what the product does, as in
> www.CorrectColor.com<http://www.correctcolor.com/>.
> The issue here is that the brand will be "Orange," yet the Web site domain
> says something else. We could address this with a tag line, as in
> "CorrectColor…makers of Orange Software." Not an ideal use of the tagline,
> but it would help bridge the gap. The question is: How do users respond to
> going to the  "Orange Software" Web site but seeing the Web address as
> something different? Do they perceive a disconnect between the brand and
> the domain? Or is this sort of disconnect becoming part of the norm because
> of limited domain name choices?
>
> Another camp suggests that we go with an available domain that has Orange
> in it: www.Orange-Software.com <http://www.orange-software.com/> and get
> the brand in the domain name. The issue or question here is: How are
> hyphens in domain names perceived by Web users today? How might the
> hyphen affect
> users and usability of accessing the Web site?
>
> Would appreciate your wisdom and thoughts. Thank you!

-- 
Bill Swallow

Twitter: @techcommdood
Blog: http://techcommdood.com
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/techcommdood
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