What kind of domain name can be evaluated as a good name?

Let's put aside the business of acquiring, promoting and selling domain names for a moment and put ourselves in the shoes of a group of people who want to name a business, product, service or organization. Let's consider a simple question: what makes a good domain name?

1. Familiar and easy to remember

Your name must be memorable. This just means that people will remember the name. One reason people are interested in short names is that short names are usually easier to remember. Word names are also easier to remember, at least for well known words.

You can easily conduct small-scale consumer surveys. Show people a list of names and then come back in a few days to see exactly how many names they can remember from the list.

However, not all memorable names are born equal. Some memorable names may leave a negative impression or be easily remembered, but not accurately. Let's take a more in-depth look at what makes a good name.

2. Audio Interchange

An audio check, formerly known as a radio test, means: if someone hears the name, will they remember it accurately? You can run an audio test on a potential name with a group of friends or coworkers.

With audio interfaces being used more and more for search, audio testing may be more important than ever. This suggests another type of name testing you can do-say a name and see if the speech-to-text is correct.

3. Spelling

If a business is well known enough to appear on the first page of a search engine, then spelling it correctly may not be a big deal, as intent-based searches will suggest what it thinks you're looking for.

But if the business is just starting out, or if people are sending emails, it's important to get people to spell your name correctly. Short names, especially common words, have an advantage here.

If your name is based on common words, but spelled creatively, try making at most one change to a common word. Also, make only one change that seems natural and easy to convey, such as "We are EXAMPLE NAME, but spelled ak instead of c."

4. Visual Aesthetics

Many names depend on being seen on billboards, posters, advertisements, letterheads, etc. Some names are more visually pleasing.

Although difficult to define uniquely, factors such as leading and trailing characters, symmetry, and the mixing of letters of different widths and heights can affect visual aesthetics.

In two-word names, the combination of two words of equal length looks more pleasing. It is worthwhile for companies to put some effort into modeling potential names.