Building a great e-commerce website is difficult enough, but choosing a nice name for it can be even more difficult.
New ventures take a lot of energy, ambition, and passion. You've already drafted your business plan, spoken with prospective customers, and gathered all necessary equipment.
There's just one thing that's missing—the name of your eCommerce store.
An innovative business name or tagline can make a big difference in your online store's success. Keep in mind that significant marketplaces like Amazon and eBay have stringent seller standards that discourage any sort of merchant branding in order to maintain a uniform image. That's why online merchants should name their businesses in such a way that their clients will remember them readily.
A good business name can also serve as a kind of advertising. But specialized online naming services will cost you thousands of dollars to come up with an innovative name for your web store. When you're establishing a business, though, you've got other things on your mind, and your budget won't allow you to pay that much for a name.
12 Tips To Name Your eCommerce Business Effectively
If you choose to pay to an online name generator, all you have to do is enter a keyword or two and look at the generated options, then pick what works for you. But even for that, you'll need a good foundation before employing it so you can recognize greatness when you see it and make sure the most suitable name doesn't get overlooked.
Let's look at some best practices and pointers to assist you in picking the ideal eCommerce business name.
- Identify Your Brand Identity
Choosing your business's name is an important decision. It will set the tone for how your firm is seen. As a result, I recommend working backward to determine your brand persona (including intended audience, mission, and culture). After you've figured that out, you're ready to start thinking about a name. This step is essential as it will help your name directly and perfectly reflect your company's values.
- Get Creative
Rhyming words or words that begin with almost the same character can be useful. Be wary of going too far out of the box or selecting something that appeals to you but may confuse your intended audience.
Be wary of going too far out of the box or selecting something that appeals to you but may confuse your intended audience.
Choosing a pun in your business name can help people remember it because of its uniqueness, but you need to ensure it makes perfect sense. If you go for one with a subtle connection, it may not be understood by everyone. However, literal, descriptive brand names of one or two words are frequently the most effective.
Introduce more terms to your increasing list of ideas by being inventive. Don't be scared to add even the most ridiculous ideas. The poor concepts that people create often lead to some great names.
- Come Up With Something Short And Unique
Put descriptive names aside. Short, distinct names are simpler to remember and perform better on social media and SEO. Twitter has a character limit, and also most descriptive names have already been chosen as handles, but there will be room for a new and odd name. Complex names also push you down the list in Google searches since your keywords are already being used by your competition. So, get a little crazy or at least a little quirky with your eCommerce business name.
- Avoid Complex Names
You don't want your potential clients to be confused while searching online for your online store. You also don't want to keep correcting misspelled versions of your name. Hence, come up with a basic, easy-to-spell, and easy-to-remember name.
- Set Yourself Apart From Your Competitors
Make a list of competitors' business names and try to determine what they mean. It's a useful practice, especially if you've overlooked your brand's market positioning and jumped right to naming.
Examine their branding strategy to understand how you might distinguish your brand's place in the market. If most of them are heavy with keywords, go down the opposite road and choose an unrelated name. If your major competitor's name is the same as its founder's, you might stand out by experimenting with more expressive names.
- Test Your Ideas On Google AdWords
One of Google AdWords' best features is that it will show you all of the related search keywords along with the quantity of queries each phrase receives. Moreover, the tool will ensure that no other names draw more attention or mislead your visitors. Furthermore, if you wish to be more advanced, create a name that could be used as a verb.
- Examine For Trademark Violations
Trademarks are important to consider as they can get you into legal issues. If you aren't mindful of trademarks, you might have to modify your company or product names later due to an upcoming lawsuit. That is why you must always trademark your name after conducting research ahead of time. Carry out your due diligence and go the extra mile with the US Patent and Trademark Office. It's well worth the effort.
- Make It Relevant To Your Story
We use stories to communicate. It's all about connecting with our target audience through successful marketing and communication. One of the most popular questions I've seen when selecting the name of a new online business is, "how did you think of your name?" If you respond, "that sounds cool" or "it describes what we do," you have, in my opinion, wasted a significant chance to make a lasting impression on your target market. Your name should tell your brand's story that everyone remembers or even talks about often.
- Add A Prefix Or Suffix
Successful businesses include Spotify and OkCupid. A word of caution: fashionable terms may keep you out of trouble in terms of availability, but they swiftly go out of vogue. Do you recall the Napster–Friendster craze? It's so noughties.
- Non-Dictionary Words
Make a new word that doesn't exist in the dictionary. This will be a name that will entirely be your own creation and allow you to distinguish yourself. It will also help you secure a domain name and the URLs for your social media accounts. However, ensure that the name is memorable by making it catchy. Accenture, Zillow, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Hipmunk are examples of this strategy.
- Try Foreign Languages
If you put a few relevant or related terms into Google Translate, you'll find a wealth of words that signify nothing in your original tongue but can help you build fantastic businesses. Zappos (previously the unimaginative and uninteresting ShoeSite.com) is derived from the Spanish term zapatos, which means "shoes."
- Misspell It
Tumblr, Flickr, Toggl, and Reddit were all born this way. They might not seem simple in their written form, but they are pronounced like an everyday word. For instance, Flickr is basically the misspelled form of the word flicker. It has since evolved into its own naming convention.
Change a letter, eliminate a vowel, or add a letter, but don't go overboard. Gousto and Ocado both added or dropped letters to come up with their names. By altering a letter, Zomato rendered the word 'tomato' and made it unfamiliar.
Should Your Domain Name Be The Same As The Business Name?
While it is often advised that your store and domain names must be the same, this is not the case. This allows you some leeway if you come up with a great name only to realize that a domain name with the same spelling is already taken. What are the advantages and disadvantages of having a domain name that matches your company name?
- Benefits: An accurately matching domain name boosts SEO rankings by indicating that your website is related to a particular search term. It acts as a support in the promotion of your business or store name by stamping it on the minds of your clients
- Drawbacks: Finding a name that isn't already owned is complex, and purchasing a domain can be costly
A domain name should preferably be short, but there are no hard-and-fast guidelines about how many letters it should have. All you want is for your clients to memorize it and enter it into their web browser. Also, while .com extensions are typically favored because of their widespread use and ease of remembering, alternative extensions are becoming increasingly popular.
Wrapping Up
The process of picking a name for your eCommerce business is not only challenging, but it can be a time-consuming task or a stroke of brilliance as well. So, even if you wish to rearrange a few of the processes to meet your personality better, keep in mind that you're not just building a root domain name but a brand.
What you create of a brand is up to you. Creativity and commitment will always win out over made-up branding norms.
If you've already selected a name for your eCommerce store, download Zaapi and set up your online store today. Want to know more about our features? Visit our website and connect with us if you still have any questions.
Photo by:
