Name can hurt your credibility — Your domain

It’s OK to not have the best domain. But at least choose a decent one.

We talk a lot regarding how a great domain name gives a firm instant credibility.

As an example, entrepreneur Jason Calacanis recently stated:

When people see a great domain name like robinhood.com or calm.com, this inspires people since it’s hard to get those domain names. It’s hard to have the one-word domain name and it makes you look like you have a serious brand.

I’d argue the inverse is also true: if you have a horrible brand, your business loses credibility.

There are plenty of good domains out there that businesses can acquire for a few thousand dollars. These are respectable, professional domains. They won’t give their users instant credibility like Calm.com and Inside.com do, but they also don’t look bad.

Then there are domains that make a firm look fly-by-night.

I recently evaluated online event platforms (for something unrelated to domains). It’s imperative to choose an online event platform that won’t disappear the night ahead of your event.

A lot of virtual event platforms are, not surprisingly, fresh. Some have chosen bad domains that make them hard to trust.

Consider Run The World. By all accounts, it has some great clients. It just raised $10 million.

Its domain name is RunTheWorld.today.

I don’t have a problem with firms using fresh top level domains. It can make sense. But taking a long name like this and tacking on two more syllables?

Other choices make more sense, like .live or .events.

I certainly scrutinized the firm more given its domain choice. The social proof from its investors and clients was much more notable given the domain.

Some other options are Crowdcast, which uses Crowdcast.io. That’s a pretty good firm name. There’s also Hopin.to. I don’t love the fact that it’s on Tonga’s top level domain, but at least it plays well with the firm name.

None of these firms need to use the domain events.com. But a bit more effort would go a long way.