When a Good Domain Name is Bad
Posted by Michael D Jensen on August 21st, 2007
I just moved to Southern Utah (hence the lack of posts). We found a nice local furniture store, Boulevard Home Furnishings, that everyone calls “The Boulevard”. They seem to do everything right, the perfect furniture store. They have car shopping carts for the kids, candy for the kids, bottled water for the adults, sales people are friendly, large selection, good deals, a great return policy, etc. But there is one thing they missed the boat on, a good domain name.
Their domain BuySmartToday.com goes along with the store slogan “Buy Smart”. Initially you think, okay not too bad of a domain. Not too long, easy to spell, even a decent keyphrase (buy smart). But, I found myself googling for the store every time I wanted to look at their website because their slogan never stuck, especially their domain. It was too far removed from the name of the actual store as everyone knows it and refers to it as. Unfortunately the company doesn’t even own the domain for the full name of the store, BoulevardHomeFurnishings.com, although thats a handful to type.
Whilst doing a Google search, I found another domain for the store that points to the hard to remember one: blvdhome.com. Now we’re getting somewhere. The next day I found myself remembering this one even more than the actual one, because it has an association to the name of the store.
Lesson learned? While having a domain for one of your keywords is great, if it doesn’t associate enough with the name of your company, product, or service — enough to remember it — then it may not be the domain to go with.
5 comments Visited 1237 times August 21st, 2007 Michael D Jensen
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