Efficient communication is a must in the marketplace and online you have to regard your website as a property in cyberspace. Like with physical property you need to announce it – and branding your web address is a part of it. The mechanisms are not the same. You need to know exactly what to do through efficient communication of your domain name and general web address – the url. These 3 easy steps will do it for you.
1. Tip of efficient domain communication: Decide how to write your domain name
Make a list of all the possible ways to write your domain name with small and capital letters. For example write every letter in capital, write all words of the domain with first capital letter, and so on. You know the domain is just the name with the .com or what ever extension afterwards. In the beginning of the Internet when people were not used to web addresses it was mandatory to write the www. before the domain name. Nowadays it seems OK to drop the three w’s before the name because the .com extension will be enough for branding it as a domain name and the address on the web.
2. Tip of efficient domain communication: Make an evaluation of how people easiest read and remember your domain name
Write all the variations of how to write your domain name on different pieces of paper and ask different people, individually, what they find
a) is fastest to read,
b) is easiest to remember.
The later point is that the graphic expression of a domain has different values for people’s ability to recognize it and remember it.
3. Tip of efficient domain communication: Decide for yourself what you prefer as the standard appearance of your domain name
I guess the evaluation process of versions of your domain has given you valuable branding information. But as you are the one in charge of what your domain should communicate you have finally to take all aspects into account about what you want to be your standard appearance of your domain name.
You might for example have one of several words that you want to highlight through capital letters all through. Depending on your kind of business or organisation you should reflect on your domain written on a billboard along the highway and also with tiny letters on a business card. The mode of writing should help the branding of your web address everywhere.
Here are some examples of how to write web addresses for branding and efficient communication with the http:// and 3 w. included to make sure that these web addresses will work when people reprint this article on their own web pages or in their electronic newsletters. It is obvious that to avoid the ‘prefix’ would make them much more user friendly and memorable.