Most tech entrepreneurs invest a major chunk of their time and resources on perfecting the little things, and they forget the most crucial business function – finding the perfect domain name for their tech startup’s website.
Several tech entrepreneurs make the mistake of selecting a domain name that is hard to build a tech brand with or one that doesn’t do much to inspire confidence in the minds of customers and investors.
The ones that do think of crisp names often fail to acquire an exact match domain name and end up settling for something that wasn’t their first choice.
As a business that represents innovation and uniqueness, your tech startup’s website should support that theme. After all, your website is your window to the world and it doubles up as the virtual address of your tech startup.
Which is why your startup’s website should sport a slick domain name that does justice to your core competency and one that defines what you do.
For instance, if your tech startup is called Red Rocket, then www.redrocket.tech makes for a brandable and memorable alternative as opposed to www.red-rockettechnologies.com.
To help you out of this name game muddle and to help you make smarter domain name choices, we’ve put together a list of what you should and shouldn’t do when picking a domain name for your tech startup.
What you should do
1. Be practical – Pick a short, simple, and meaningful name
A short and simple name is one that is easy to spell, easy to read, and easy to type.
In short, your domain name should ace the radio test. A radio test makes for the most effective way to check if your domain name is simple enough for people to understand it and spell it when they hear it for the first time.
For example, Smartcars is a Spanish company that offers AI based mobility and automotive systems and uses www.smartcars.tech as its web address. Their domain name will surely ace the radio test.
2. Be smart – Use the same name everywhere
If you’ve already thought of a creative name for your tech startup, we advise sticking to it and using it as your domain name.
Branding best practices suggest using the same identity across all online channels as it helps with continuity and this helps towards brand visibility across platforms.
What this means is that you need to search for a domain name that is available. For instance, if the name of your choice is not available on traditional domain extensions such as .com or .biz, doesn’t mean you should drop your name idea.
Simply take the smart route by looking for names on relevant new domain extensions. As a tech startup, you can look for your desired name on a .tech domain to pair your brand name with.
Consider Stronger, a cybersecurity business that urges businesses and individuals to opt for stronger cybersecurity measures, that aptly chose www.stronger.tech as their web address.
Heather Stanford, CEO at Stronger said, “We liked the word ‘Stronger’ but wanted people to know that we were in technology. The .tech domain name was a great solution because our name became Stronger.tech – short, powerful, and conveyed what we do and which industry we belong to.”
3. Be future-oriented – Pick a name that will stand the test of time
In the past, many innovative tech businesses were christened with a super cool trendy name that worked well for them. However, the trendiness lasted only so long.
What is a trend now may not be so three years later. And you can’t go about changing your business name and domain name at the drop of a hat. Which is why you need to pick a smart name that will sound fresh and be relevant in the future.
An ambiguous domain name such as www.little.ly may sound cool now but it might not be cool in the future. On the flipside, a meaningful domain name such as www.littlely.tech is future-proof and makes for a memorable identity.
What you shouldn’t Do:
1. Avoid including unwanted characters
In the section above we mentioned why you should pick a domain name that is simple, short and one that passes the radio test.
A lot of that has to do with picking a startup name and domain name that does not include any unnecessary characters or numbers. The idea here is that your domain name should be clean and free of any confusion.
The best way to pick a clean domain name for your tech startup is to avoid doing the following:
- Avoid including numbers with words (www.100smartphones.tech)
- Avoid using hyphens (www.smart-phone-app.tech)
- Avoid using abbreviations (www.smartphone4sale.tech)
- Avoid using unusual spellings (www.smaartphonezz.tech)
2. Avoid using a name that sounds like someone else’s name
The last thing you want is for your tech startup’s domain name to get mixed up with another business or brand. Which is why you should avoid looking for names that sound like that of another brand or business.
Although it might be tempting to pick a domain name that sounds like that of another successful tech brand’s name, you should stay away from this dirty practice.
Not only are there massive legal implications attached to this tactic, imitating or mimicking a brand name or domain name is a branding fiasco and a marketing disaster.
It’s best to pick an original name and then trademark it for your brand’s safety.
3. Avoid picking a name on a wrong or irrelevant domain extension
It is critical to pick a name on a relevant domain extension. Although this may seem like a no-brainer, there are numerous tech startups that end up choosing a name on domain extension that doesn’t define what they do or one that confuses people or one that doesn’t offer the option to pick their exact match name.
Since traditional domains such as .com and .net have been around for decades, it’s hard to find the name of your choice on them. Other new domain extensions such as .AI and .IO are either too ambiguous or too specific in nature and they don’t offer much room for business scalability.
However, a .tech domain offers the availability of names and is far more meaningful in nature. After all, the word ‘tech’ is globally understood as an acronym of the word ‘technology’ and this makes the .tech an umbrella domain that encompasses everything under the technology periphery.
Final Thoughts
In today’s digital world you can’t be too callous and careless about your domain name choices and settle for any random name. You need to pick a domain name that will double up as your tech startup’s brand name and become your global identity.
You need to pick a name that can transform your techs startup into a solid brand a formidable authority in your niche. And a .tech domain should be your weapon of choice!