What does a user see in a domain name?

should it reflect the content.

[mack]

I often wonder what an average user thinks of when they see a web address.

I know that I have my own views and opinions, for example I would be more likey to trust a company using www.company-name.com as oposed to www.cheapest-ever-<?product?>.com even if both companies where in the same field of business and sold the same products. We are begining to see more and more companied adopting longer domain names that use keywords or descriptive terms to let the user know what they are selling. My gutt feeling when I see such a site is "out to make a quick buck" What are your feelings about this and what do you think the average joe surfer thinks?

[korkus2000]

I don't think they really look if they go there through a search engine. If they type it in then I think keyword-keyword-keyword-keyword.com might raise some eyebrows.

[Sinner_G]

It is a personal view, but I think it depends a lot on the brand name. Of course a user will go to coca-cola.com rather than to the-cheapest-drink-around.com. On the other side, for products where there is no well-known name, you better go for nameoftheproduct.com than johnsmithandsons.com.

[hayluke]

I agree completley Mack, users will trust a name they've heard of. In my experience this is particularly true when buying things online..

[caine]

ditto, Mack.

Brand is the key, and except in extreme circumstances, can you not get a brand name to the top of a SE instead of keyterm loaded domain names, which are definetly on the way out.

[Marcia]

I'm still wrestling with a decision over this very thing. It's a choice between catchyname.com which could become branding by itself.
There's also very catchy text that will imprint the phrase even more.

The other choice is catchyname-keyword-phrase.com to make sure the keyword phrase gets into link text. It's not spammy because it's short and accurate, but by itself catchyname.com would more easily be remembered, making it more of a branding tool and easier for people to type in.

It's a clear trade off with this, very hard to decide. Any thoughts?

[Sinner_G]

Does catchyname clearly get the idea across? Like searchengineworld, where you know from the name what it is about?

Is it going to be a pure .com thing or are you planning on going brick&mortar?

You make it sound as though the catchyname-keyword-phrase.com is purely SEO driven, which I think is too much.

For brand names, I would always go for the shorter version, because we poor human beings are stupid and can't remember too much at a time.

E.g.: the old directory Argus Clearinghouse (some of the older people out there may remember it ;)) never stood a chance against their competition, although they had pretty much the same services and both sites were well-designed. But what would you remember? Argus Clearinghouse or Yahoo! ?

[skibum]

I go for short easly memorable domain names for all clients and suggest they name of the company be more descriptive.

Company name might be New York Home Mortgage Loans, while domain name would be nychomeloans

Domains geared only towards crawler SEO traffic get the longer more descriptive-domain-names. If it will be promoted in such a manner that people have to type it in or remember it, the shorter domain name always gets the nod.

[richlowe]

To me (as a surfer) short and easy is the rule. Brand is the rule. I dislike like and markety type URLs - makes me instantly distrust the company. Not necessarily enough not to do business, but one strike against them.

RIchard Lowe

[Zaccix]

With websites selling stuff, I'm much more likely to buy from a site that has a memorable and relevant domain name like xyzparts.com, than one with a domain name like "cheapest-anywhere-xyz-parts.com" or one hosted on a free webspace provider. Of course, the site has to be decent as well.

But on the other hand, when it comes to sites that don't actually sell anything (like blogs, games news sites etc.), I don't mind what the domain is called as long as the content is good.

[NGene]

As a normal surfer, I like more short names. They're a *lot* easier to remember. I didn't remember even "www.webmasterworld.com" and because I hadn't bookmarked this site, I had a bit trouble finding my way back. See how easily some surfers forget? ;)

When a website doesn't sell anything, I don't care what the domain is, although I usually forget names like too-long-domain.com. When a website is selling things, the domain matters. Short and easy is a must. If the website has something like key-word-phrase-productname.com, it's almost the same as saying "We're here only for $$$" and I usually go away from such sites quickly.

So, what I'm saying here, if your catchyname.com reflects any way the product you're going to sell, my humble suggestion would be to get the short domain.

[Sinner_G]

>See how easily some surfers forget?

As an aside, some of the most often searched words on metacrawlers are a bit weird.

The following often appear in the top 10:

google
yahoo
ebay
hotmail
hotmail.com
www.hotmail.com (sad but true)
and so on...

Guess surfers forget VERY easily.