Have You Considered The Aesthetics Of Domain Names?
Do domain names have an aesthetics component? By aesthetics, I am not using the strict artist definition, I am using more the ‘pleasing to the eye’ definition. When it comes to search engines, they don’t give one hoot about aesthetics. What about users?
Of course, this whole question could be moot depending on the purpose of your web site. If you are targeting search traffic, either organic or paid, then your domain name will have little affect. If you’re targeting social media, however, it could be a different story.
Social marketing is as much about branding as it is about selling – probably more so. To brand effectively, your domain name needs to be fairly easy to remember. To have a domain such as “hotlittleredwidets” maybe easy to remember, but look at it. It doesn’t look right. Sure, you can play with it a little such as HotLittleRedWidgets – that looks a little better with each word at least defined.
When it comes to aesthetics for a domain name, the blending of three or four words into one can create confusion. This confusion, by the way, is generally the result of consonants, the main culprits being b and d, and f,h,l and t. When these letters come together they have a blurring effect to the eye – hence the term aesthetic.
For social marketing, your domain names need to be easily identified and easily remembered. I know we are moving into an era where urls are hidden behind anchor text. However, users still need to know your url in order to directly access your site rather than going through third parties to find the link.
Domain names and their ‘readability’ are little thought of these days. This is probably because we use them less and because web site owners rely more on organic search results than direct access. The one benefit users are getting is the specific nature of domain names, no matter how bad they look. Let’s face it, a domain name like hotlittleredwidgets.co.uk certainly tells me what the site is going to be all about and is much better than say, hltw.co.uk or hot-little-red-widgets.co.uk. How do your domain names shape up when it comes to aesthetics?
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