Radio Test

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The “radio test” for domain names is this: can a potential customer find a company website after listening to a commercial and hearing the company domain name mentioned?

Take the following example. You’re listening to an advertisement for a web hosting provider that can slash your costs to $5 per month with guaranteed uptime and 24/7 customer service. You’re currently paying $25 per month, so saving $240 per year is a significant savings. The fictitious company’s website is webhosting4u.com. At the end of the advertisement, they tell you to visit “web hosting for you dot com”, and then go on to explain, “that’s web hosting, the number four, the letter U dot com”. How memorable is that?

Worse yet, if your domain name has hyphens it’s been shown that people forget if or where the hyphens belong. Was that “web hyphen hosting dot com” or “web hosting dot com”?

It is the responsibility of any company to make their products and services are as easy for their customers to make use of as possible. That includes making their corporate identity as easy as possible as well by purchasing domain names that don’t require an explanation.

Useful References:

• So why did the Delicious Bookmark service switch from del.icio.us to delicious.com? We’ve seen a zillion different confusions and misspellings of “del.icio.us” over the years (for example, “de.licio.us”, “del.icio.us.com”, and “del.licio.us”), so moving to delicious.com will make it easier for people to find the site and share it with their friends.” –Delicious Blog