Domain Name, what looks better

welshboy

welshboy

welshboy

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We just had this discussion in a work meeting and have a further discussion after the weekend, and I wondered if I could get your views.

We have a new product, and we want to use probably the cites name, this will be printed on the bottle along with picture etc.

What looks better to average eye, probably register both and forward to the same site but need your opinions on what looks better for marketing wise..

Examples:
www.london-cider.com vs www.londoncider.com
www.chester-cider.com vs www.chestercider.com
www.portugal-cider.com vs www.portugalcider.com
You get the gist! (yes im using cider as an example, because its on my brain a cold glass would go down lovely right now in this weather)

opinions?

thanks
 
Last edited:
I-don't-like-hyphens-in-general.com

They make it to harder than it needs to be to instruct people to the right web address.
 
Hyphenated domains are terrible.

Especially if you end up having to advertise/explain the domain using audio only, imagine having to say "London Hyphen Cider Dot Com" every single time, and then having to explain what a hyphen is to the uneducated masses, "it's the dash thing, between 0 and +, above the P on your keyboard".

Eurgh.
 
I'd go without the hyphen.

We picked a hyphenated domain for a support portal and had endless phone conversations with people who ask if that's a minus sign or just put an underscore in.
 
A hyphen could be handy if the two words could be read another way

penisland
msexchange

Though. I'd agree that in no hyphen is better
 
no hyphen, for all the reasons above plus people are lazy and it's a different screen for some phone keyboards!
 
People don't type URLs. They google for things. So your SEO is much more important than the domain name.

Here is the common workflow:

- Type www.google.com in the URL bar. By the time they are typing the "go" part, the browser is already auto-completing the full URL. They will still type the whole thing anyway.

- Wait for Google to load, then manually click in the search bar, even though the cursor is already there.

- Type Facebook (even though Google auto completes it after the first couple of letters, they will still type the whole thing).

- Manually click the Google Search button (they don't just hit Enter)

- Wait for the search results. Click the first search result (usually an ad, costing Facebook some money).

It's brilliant.
 
rotor said:
People don't type URLs. They google for things. So your SEO is much more important than the domain name.
Click to expand...

That's very true as well. Despite telling people to type in the address bar at the top of the screen, so many people just typed the URL into the Google search box.

Not a major issue now though, as our support site is the #1 result for a few combinations but a pain in the early days.
 
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