Renaming Your Business after Your Website
Branding is about making your business unforgettable. When you have a different name for your business and a different name for your website you create confusion. I am a strongly in favor of naming your website and your business the same. This way if someone knows your business name, they will know your website name. Make it easy on them.
There are two events where you should look at domain and business names. The first is when you are first beginning to name your business. The second time is if you have grown and expanded and you need to rename your business. For instance, you started out as a flooring company selling carpets and flooring and you have now grown into an interior design company.
I strongly recommend that you pick out both a business name and a domain name that match… preferably in a .COM.
Let me give you an example. Five years ago when I started my business: Doug Williams and Associates, the domain dougwilliams.com was not available. So I selected an abbreviated domain name: dwassoc.com. This seemed reasonable to me. It was short and easy to type.
Now here was the problem. When I verbally gave out my website or email address, I was having to spell my domain name. It just didn’t make sense to people. It was not intuitive and easy to remember. I finally got tired of this and sought out the owner of dougwilliams.com and purchased the name. This was the best decision I could have made. Now I say the website or my email once and they have it.
Another one of my clients puts together business referral networking groups. They were getting ready to expand from a local company to a national franchises. Their business name was Take the Lead and their website was itakethelead.com. Takethelead.com was not available. I suggested that they change the name of their company to I Take the Lead as part of their branding strategy… and they did. They are very happy with their decision.
In researching domain names, I like to use the tool domainsbot.com. There are a number of good ones out there, but this one is my favorite.
Remember, no mater what business name you select and which domain name you select, make it memorable. This is a key part of your company’s branding strategy.