Domains and branding dilemma
Maybe I'm overthinking this way too much, but I'd love to know what IH thinks about this.
I came up with a name for my upcoming project which consists of an adjective and noun, and is quite literal -- something like 'Building Tools' (not the real name).
Perhaps not surprisingly, the .com for it has been parked for years, but the .co and hyphenated variants are available. Should I go with one of those or go back to the drawing board and come up with a different name?
Here are the options I'm considering:
- .com with a dash like
building-tools.com- Not bad in writing, but it's a bit weird to pronounce. I've heard that hyphenated domain names are frowned upon? - .co like
buildingtools.co- Could this become an SEO problem in the future as .co is the country TLD for Colombia? - Rephrase
toolsforbuilders.com- Not too sure about this. - Come up with a non-literal name - like Buildrex or Toolsmaster. Then it won't be clear what the product is from the name. Also, I don't have any fitting candidates right now.
- Try to buy off the .com - At this stage, I don't feel like spending hundreds or thousands for a domain would be a good investment.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Thanks for reading, I'd appreciate your input!
As a few other people have said, I'd go with 2 or 3. At a job awhile back I had an email address with a hyphen in it (not my choice), and it was continually a pain to spell out to people on the phone or in-person.
On the ".co", I've been wary of getting of going with one because I worry too many people will not be familiar with .co and hear ".com" or assume it is a typo and type in ".com". I have no idea how much of a real issue this could be, but it has generally pushed me to do a bit more searching to find something that stands apart a bit better.
Hi Darren, Good to know that that is a real issue. No hyphens then.
I ended up buying the
.cofor a few bucks. If I come up with a better name later on, I can always change my mind.Thanks!
Don't overthink it too much, most of the time domain name doesn't matter that much for an indie project. I'd go with #2 with .co or any other non-country specific ending that is available (.club / .app / etc)
Just make a quick decision and move on to invest time in talking to customers and shipping 😊 I think you're more likely to regret not spending enough time on validating and building sales funnel then picking the wrong domain 😊
Good luck!
Hey Artiom, Good point :). This is my first solo product, so I guess I am about to learn a lot...
I got the
.cofor now (for £6), and if I am able to come up with a better name later, I can always change my mind.Thanks!
I have almost similar "problem", so I decided to consider different domain zones, such as
*.net
*.app
Hey Alex, thanks for your suggestions!
.appis a good one, but it doesn't fit well with the name I chose. It works really well with short names (like bear.app). I'll see if I can come up with a snappy name like that. I haven't considered.net, but it seems like a good fit for product that target more technical audience which mine doesn't.Hey Radek, how are you planning to sell your "building tools"? If you could use the those keywords in the product title and description, that would free you up to create a more distinct brand identity like Buildrex, Toolsmaster, etc.
Hey Ebell, It's still very early days for me. The current plan is to do primarily content marketing (guest posts on industry blogs, Medium etc.) That could probably work with a distinct name. Thanks for the suggestion!
buildingtools sounds good
but what about, buildingtools.online
Hey Michael,
.onlineis a good shout. I haven't considered that. Thanks!I would choose number 1.
If you don’t plan to resell the domain, I think it should be fine.
2 or 3
Hey Darren, I would consider adding a suffix or prefix to the name for a .com. Most will default to .com naturally, and there are SEO benefits over most other TLDs.
As an example, our tool had a fairly generic name (Aura). While we couldn’t get the raw .com, we did pick up goaura.com.
For “tool”, here are some common examples below:
gettool.com
gotool.com (Tinder is a great example, where they initially had gotinder.com before eventually acquiring tinder.com)
trytool.com
toolapp.com