Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

Note that "www.lanparty-computers.com" is currently available.

The thing that worries me is the "-". I`m afraid that potential customers may forget to insert the dash if somehow my website is spread through word-of-mouth and may possibly go to lanpartycomputers.com and see that unfinished site. Maybe I can use lanparty-computers.com until the domain lanpartycomputers.com becomes available, Then I can reroute one website to the next.

Hi Lanparty. There is no harm getting the www.lanparty-computers domain, but I agree with others regarding the fact that if your site gets popular, the owner of lanpartycomputers.com could create some headaches for you because most people just don`t naturally type the hyphen key if they read about something online. Many use Google when typing a name, which is good for you since your site will almostt surely pop up to the top.

For any site that takes credit cards or PayPal, I would recommend a dot com. Unless it is a charity (.org), people just expect a dot com in my opinion.

I would think a bit out of the box and use something much shorter. That will be better anyway. Something like LANpartyGear.com. Tell people what you are offering if possible.

Hope that helps,

Andrew




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Andrew Darlow, Consultant & Editor
The Imaging Buffet

Author, 301 Inkjet Tips and Techniques: An Essential Printing Resource for Photographers - InkjetTips.com

I decided to do a little research of my own and I came across two examples that support what you all are saying. I went to google and I typed in gaming computers as that is where my focus is and the first two websites are vigorgaming.com and digitalstormonline.com. Granted vigor does have gaming in the game but it does not mention that it is a computer company and digital storm does not mention gaming or computers in its name but yet they are two well established gaming computer companies. I`m guess that what I need is more of a marketable name or I can forget about putting so much worry into the name of the website as long as it ends in .com.

I think you`re spending too much time worrying about what won`t work, how you can`t get exactly the name you want, and what people may or may not do in micro-level situations. :-) To say that people may forget the hyphen, and that`s why you don`t want your chosen name in the domain URL is, I think, "over analyzing" all this. And that often means a psychological hesitation starting the business itself.

Our own company is "IB Designs, USA," with the URL being ibdesiignsusa.com. It has nothing at all to do with signal flags, which is what we make and sell. And yet, if you do a search for anything about signal flags, you`ll find us everywhere.

So what do you think "most" people will remember: That they heard about this company called IB Designs, and want to go find it? Or that they heard about this company that makes signal flags, and can`t remember the name? Which is the better advantage, that people will have to type in our name to find us, or that they will have to type in something about signal flags, and we show up right away?

Would you rather people only know about Lanparty Computers? Or would rather they know where to get the best gaming computers?

Its not really hesitation, its just that I`m starting off in a new field of having to market my own business. Since the majority of my business will be done online I want to make sure that I don`t mess up step 1 of my website.

That being said I would rather people know where they can get the best gaming computers.  I`ll take a day and think over which route I`m going to take. Right now I`m leaning towards going with Lanparty-Computers.com. I`ve been reading up about SEO and I guess that the name isn`t as big of a deal. As long as I have good optimization I should get good exposure through search engines.

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That was the motivation that was behind the name. Lanparty is a computer gaming term that means that computer gamers bring their computer together over a friends house or something and they play computer games over their home network. I figured that 1. Its a computer gamer term so computer gamers may relate to it and 2. It sounds fun so maybe even if you don`t know what the term means completely you can still get the idea that we represent fun with computers. After all, what sounds more fun than party? :)

Going back to the "lan-party.com" domain, I believe (although I may be wrong) that a hyphen in a name is seen as forming two words, where it comes to search engines and file names. An underscore is seen as a single word, if I understand it right. The domain name is an important aspect of the overall search/find strategy, so you may want to again consider taking that domain if it`s still available.