How to Name a Website

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By Simon Thomas
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So, you're going to create the next big thing - the next Amazon, ebay, or even eHow - on the marketing side, the most fundamental component is the name of your company.

The success or failure of a company is often dependent on the companies name.

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Instructions

Step 1

Write down the Offer of your website in one sentence. For example, the offer of eHow is "How to Do Just About Everything". (For crafting your offer, refer to Mark Joyner's book, The Irresistible Offer)
Step 2

Brainstorm some words that summarize your name. In our example "How to Do Just About Everything", we might come up with How To, Know How, Everything 101, Simple Scripts, Life Steps.
Step 3

Put these names through a thesaurus and come up with a lot more combinations (such as http://thesaurus.reference.com/)
Step 4

Now, see what one's are actually available, expiring, or for sale by using a domain search engine (the best and free resource, I've found is domainsbot.com). Get the one's that you like the most.
Step 5

Test the name that you have picked by running Pay Per Click split tests on different names. (See the domain name product testing resource below for the full strategy.)

Tips & Warnings

From Ries's The 11 Immutable Laws of Internet Branding: "The Law of the Proper Name: Your name stands alone on the Internet, so you'd better have a good one."
There are lot more nuanced aspects, such as alliteration, picking consonants that convey connotations, and how to make up
Try to make sure that your name contains a benefit, such as the often referenced example "DieHard" battery.
As Ries writes in the 11 Immutable Laws of Internet Branding, "The kiss of death for an internet brand is a common name." Examples would be shopping.com, business.com
Make it easy to pronounce. Ironically, Ries gives the example of "eHow" being hard to pronounce (though I don't think so)

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