HN Explorer

Ask HN: Is the domain name even important?

3 points by Speeed0 ↗ HN
I understand that "brand" is important for every product. Same goes for start-up. But I wonder is a domain name really so important when it comes to people finding a content?

If you have a social network/news portal is is even important if the name is some random sequence of characters, some quirky name, or domain that you have paid $1,000,000.00.

I'm refereeing to new domain names. Not about buying one to get their domain raking, existing traffic, etc.

People find the websites and content by searching for it, right? Do people really type the who URL or do they let autocomplete do the job?

What's your take on this? This article has prompted me to think about this https://fundersclub.com/blog/2017/05/03/dot-com-domains/.

4 comments

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latexr
Coincidentally, a few minutes before opening HN I wanted to check a domain name on Gandi¹. I seldom use it and didn’t recall how it was spelled, though I remembered it’s not like the other Gandhi² and that the difference was in the “h”. So I tried ghandi.com and gandi.com before doing a search for “gandhi domains” and finding the correct one: gandi.net.

In contrast, I have never forgotten or mistyped hover.com.

When in conversation with friends, it often happens they have a problem and I vaguely remember a service I’ve seen (perhaps on HN) but never used. If the domain name was memorable I say it and they open it to check later. If the domain sucked I may struggle to remember it. Maybe I’ll search for it later and maybe I’ll find it and send it to them, but it will heavily depend on how much they need it and how confident I am that I can find it again and it will solve their problem.

Because they’ll be following my recommendation, if I can’t remember Gandi but I do remember Hover it’s the latter who will get their business.

¹ https://www.gandi.net

² https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahatma_Gandhi

Speeed0
Yes, this exactly. Like I know that one freelancing platform is Fiverr (I had to google the exact name right now), but I first typed Fivver. And with all of the crazy start-up names no knowledge of spelling can help you.
latexr
This time I remembered enough to get to it. Other times I don’t and the website remains unvisited. Or the person asking for a recommendation gets one for the competing service whose URL I can recall.

If you’re going to be sarcastic you may not get many answers. If you’re not interested in other perspectives and instead wanted to make an assertion, a “Tell HN” might’ve been more appropriate.

bombcar
A short memorable name is useful in one main remaining context - name@domain when typing in an email address.