Internet Business Rules-Part2

If you want to build a brand on the internet, you must design a new brand specifically for this new media. In other words, you must provide interaction on the website and usually need a new name.

Once again, the difference between the network and other media lies in the interaction. Unless your website has this key element, it will inevitably be defeated in the electronic space.

Competition is fierce. The number of network companies has exceeded the number of trademarks registered in the United States.

Interaction is not just the ability to select from a menu. (When reading books or magazines, you can select the chapters you want to read by reading the contents. You can press the buttons on the phone to make a choice. You can also choose from a liquor list in a restaurant .)

Interaction means that after you enter instructions, the website can provide the information you requested in the format you requested. Try the Amazon website (Amazon.com ). If you enter a subject, the web page will provide a ticket based on your requirements. You can also search by author or title. (You can give it a try. When you go to a restaurant, you don't ask the waiter for a wine order, but ask him for a list of all the French red wines worth less than $40. You will find that this interaction cannot be achieved in restaurants .)

InterAction also includes the ability to provide additional information based on your first request. If you purchase a book on the Amazon website, the website will also provide the names of at least three other books purchased by buyers before the book.

InterAction also includes the ability to add your personal information on the website. The best internet website is a two-way channel. On the Amazon website, you can grade the books you have read with one or five stars, and post your comments below the books.

Interactivity also includes the ability to handle complex pricing conditions in almost real time. Taking air tickets as an example, the airline ticket website can choose from a series of expenses, flights, dates and conditions, and give you a quotation on the spot, so that you can decide to accept or reject it. They also recommend flight schedules at the lowest price. (Cisco website is another Internet case that makes good use of this real-time pricing technology .)

InterAction also includes the ability to perform various tests: Intelligent Testing, driving testing, professional testing, and psychological testing. These fields will create big brands and big businesses.

InterAction also includes the ability to conduct various types of auctions. Price online (priceline.com) and eBay are two major brands that have used this feature. (Currently, eBay has a market value of $18 billion and an online market value of $7.9 billion .)

InterAction also includes the ability to analyze various situations and provide countermeasures. We once collaborated with a well-known person to build a personal website. The homepage of the website lists various problems that an individual may encounter.

We suggest: "You cannot do this. The page should be interactive. Ask the person a series of questions first, and then let the computer tell him where the problem may be. "

Chapter 2 general naming rules

Internet brands use the common name to find their own dead ends.

Naming a product is the most important marketing decision.

As early as the book positioning published in 1980, we have already said so. So how does the network change the role of the brand name?

In the era of positioning, the name is very important. In the Internet era, the name is crucial.

There is a reason. Before the Internet era, a brand always has a visual structure. The name is the most important element. However, the visual structure also affects brand purchases, such as the shape of the delicious cola bottle, the color of the Kodak film packing box, the font of the intel logo, and the appearance and Site Selection of McDonald's restaurants.

The Internet excluded these visible parts. You enter the website by typing letters on the keyboard. There are no images, no colors, no fonts, no appearances, and no site selection.

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If the name is important, why is the name of most network brands poor? That's pretty good. The names of most Internet brands are not bad, but bad.

Typical internet brands include advertising.com, buy.com, communities.com, cooking.com, and cruise.com ), desktop Network (paitop.com), flower Network (flower.com), Garden Network (garden.com), equipment network (gear.com), gift Network (gifts.com), hardware appliance network (hardware.com), fever Audio Network (hifi.com ), home Network (homepage.com), image network (images.com), personal network (individual.com), component Network (ingredients.com), Legal Network (law.com), mail network (mail.com ), office Network (office.com), telephone network (phone.com), postcard Network (postcard.com), sales network (sales.com), Song Network (songs.com), sports Network (sports.com), ticketing Network (tickets.com), election Network (vote.com), Climate Network (weather.com), wine Network (wine.com), Female Network (women.com ).

None of these companies are insignificant, and large companies or venture capitalists have invested heavily in them. For example, desktop has just completed the first round of its $29 million financing. The market value of the telephone network has reached $6.8 billion, and the purchase network plans to spend $50 million in advertising this year.

What are the issues with these names? They are all common names.

A general name is a word used to reference any individual in a creature or a thing. "Automobile" is a common name.

A proprietary name is a word that refers to a specific creature or a specific thing. For example, Mercedes is a proprietary name.

Traditionally, brand names are proprietary names. If you want to work purely for the language or the u. S. Trademark Office, you will call the brand name a proprietary adjective, such as a "Mercedes-Benz. However, most people use the brand name as a term and they will say, "I drive a Mercedes-Benz", rather than "I drive a Mercedes-Benz ".)

The most well-known and most valuable brand names all use proprietary names, rather than generic names. According to the statistics of the brand Consulting Group Interbrand, there are 60 global brands worth more than $1 billion, none of which are common names.

Among the 60 families, the typical include Coca-Cola, Microsoft, Ford, Disney, Intel, McDonald's, sunny road, Nokia, Nestle, HP, Gillette, Kodak and Sony. (According to Interbrand group statistics, the total value of these 60 brands has reached an incredible $729.4 billion .)

In the next few years, you will see cola.com, software.com ),

Automotive Network (cars.com), Kids Network (kids.com), chip network chips.com ),

Hamburger network hamburgers.com), tobacco network cigarettes.com ),

Mobile Network (cellphones.com), coffee.com ),

Computer Network (computers.com), Razor Network (razors.com ),

Will websites such as photos.com and electronics.com rank among the most valuable brands in the world? We don't think so.

The 30-Year-Old CEOs managing emerging network companies shouted: "The Internet is different ". You can wear a uniform, tie, and leather shoes without making money. You can get stock options worth millions of dollars and use a general name to name your website.

Is that true? Is the Internet really different for brand names? At least not yet.

The leading brand of Internet service providers (ISPs) is not isp.com., but American online (AOL ).

The leading brand of Web search engines is not search engine Network (searchengine.com), But Yahoo !).

The leading brand of online bookstores is not books.com, but Amazon (Amazon.com ).

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The leading brand of a job search website is not job. scom, but Monster.com ).

The leading brand of the auction website is not auction.com, but ebay.

The leading brand of the ticket quote website is not airlineticketbid.com, but priceline.com ).

The leading brand of a travel website is not travel network (travel. com), but travel dia.com.

The leading brand of the e-card website is not the greeting card network (greetingcard.com), but the Blue Mountains Network (bluemountain.com ).

Two of the 60 most valuable brands selected by Interbrand are Internet brands: American online, worth $4.3 billion; Yahoo, worth $1.8 billion. You will find that both online and Yahoo are proprietary names, rather than common names.

Despite all the evidence that proprietary names should be used, why do most Internet managers still prefer to give websites general names instead of proprietary names? There are three reasons:

(1) When there are few websites operating on the Internet and few people know the website name, the general name does have an advantage. If you want to find a shoe-selling website, type shoes.com ).

This is like an old-fashioned grocery store. If you want cookies, tell the clerk to ask for them. If you want an oatmeal cookie, tell the clerk to ask for it. Today, however, there are many brands of cookies and oatmeal cookies in supermarkets. You can't just ask for cookies. You have to say you want Ritz cookies. We can't say we want oatmeal cookies, but we want pepperidgefarm.

(2) When the network started, many companies launched their websites with a common name. After all, generic names are the most direct way for users to understand what a website is, and generic names allow users to easily browse the network.

The advantage of generic names will only last for two weeks, and then hundreds of websites will emerge. Today, more than 5 million of network companies are put into operation, so generic names have no advantage.

(3) Today, the Internet has existed for several years, but Internet companies are still unable to go beyond their mindset. They still think that generic names are the best method. To some extent, this is a situation of self-reinforcement. When everyone uses a common name, new entrants think this is the case, so they do it.

In the candidcamera program, Alan cutting found that human nature is just following the big stream, regardless of whether that is appropriate or not. One of his most famous pieces happened in an elevator: the first person walked in and stood forward, and the next three were colluded beforehand. They walked in to the back station. When the fourth person entered, he felt uncomfortable and turned his body back to the back.

Face the reality. This is because most websites use generic names and does not mean that this is the best website policy. It only means that most network operators converge due to group pressure.

The Internet is still very young, so it is not yet the worst. The general name is flooded as follows:

For automobiles, there are autoconnect.com, autosite.com, autotrader.com, autoweb.com, cars.com, carsdirect.com, and carorder.com.

In terms of banking, there are ebank.com, telebank.com, and netbank.com.

Diamond: diamonds.com, internetdiamonds.com, and worlddiamonds.com.

In terms of employment, there are computerjobs.com, gotajob.com, headhunter.net, and jobs.com.

In terms of fax, there are efax.com, fax.com, and jfax.com.

Financial aspects include 401k.com, ecoverage.com, ecredit.com, loansdirect.com, ehealthinsurance.com, eloan.com, loanwise.com, mortgage.com, and studentloan.com.

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For furniture, there are behome.com, decoratewithstyle.com, ezshop.com, furniture.com, furniturefind.com, furnitureonline.com, housenet.com, and living.com.

For grocery stores, there are food.com, netgrocer.com, and homegrocer.com.

In terms of health and nutrition, there are ediets.com, enutrition.com, healthquick.com, and onhealth.com.

For pets, there are petco.com, pets.com, and petstore.com.

In terms of postal services, there are estamp.com, stamps.com, and simplepostage.com.

For drug stores, there are drugstore.com, yourpharmacy.com, and rx.com.

In real estate, there are regions, eproperty.com, goodhome.com, region, region, homegain.com, homes.com, region, homestore.com, myhome.com, ourhouse.com, owners.com, realestate.com and realtor.com.

In terms of shopping, there are istopshop.com, buy.com, buyitnow.com, netmarket.com, nowonspecial.com, shopnow.com, and shopping.com.

In terms of tourism, there are cheaptickets.com, lowestfare.com, travelholiday.com, and trip.com.

These websites are not common names randomly selected from millions of websites. They are backed by risky investors and have millions of dollars of advertisement support.

Art.com spent $18 million in advertising this year.

Autoconnect.com spent $15 million in advertising this year.

Carsdirect spent $30 million in advertising this year.

Drugstore.com spent $30 million in advertising this year.

Homestore.com spent $20 million in advertising this year.

Living.com spent $20 million in advertising this year.

Pets.com spent $20 million in advertising this year.

Petstore.com spent $10 million in advertising this year.

Realestate.com spent $13 million in advertising this year.

Rx.com spent $13 million in advertising this year.

Thousands of Internet companies want to enter the customer's mind by burning money. These websites are just a few of them. Most of the money is thrown into the bottomless pit, and a small portion of these general-name websites cannot make money.

[The website name of one of the largest advertising agencies in the internet advertising field is agency.com, which marks the times.]

Are there any success stories for these websites with common names? Of course. In the country of the blind, the only-eye Dragon is the king. No one stops drinking beer because all beer brands are generic names. No one stops online shopping because all websites are generic names.

In the absence of competition, people will buy things from the generic name website. However, with the emergence of more and more powerful "private names" websites, generic names will be destroyed.

You must win in the customer's mind. The customer's mind regards the common name as the representative of all websites of a category, rather than the representative of a specific website.

In people's minds, all car websites are "cardotcoms )". Then, how can Alibaba Cloud Automotive Network (car.com) establish a unique identity for itself different from other "automotive network companies?

In people's minds, all the furniture websites are "furnituredotcoms )". So how can furniture.com establish a unique identity for itself different from other "furniture.com?

Most internet brands are purely generic, and most of these websites will be useless.

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What is etoys? E-toy (electronic toys) are toys bought online. Etoys is a company that sells electronic toys online.

Etoys is a powerless brand name, but the stock market does not think so. On the first day of listing, etoys's share price soared by nearly four times, bringing the company's market value to $7.7 billion, a rival to its retail market-Toys "R" Us) the market value is also 30%. (In the previous fiscal year of etoys, it earned $34.7 million and suffered a loss of $73 million .)

One of the issues with generic brands like etoys is that their competitors can join the market and create a similar name.

Etoy.com

Itoy.com

Itoys.com

Toy.com

Toys.com

Toystore.com

Itoystore.com

Etoystore.com

Etoys will naturally try to register these names and other similar names (it has started to do so ). But to what extent? How much does it cost? Does the law allow a company to own all websites with the word "Toy" in their names?

What is E * trade? E-trade refers to buying and selling stocks online. E * trade is a company engaged in stock trading online.

General brands like E * trade are powerless. The human brain thinks with voice, not with vision. E-Trade is a category name, not a company name. In addition, asterisks cannot be used in the URL name. Therefore, to log on to the E * trade network, you need to enter www.etrade.com.

Although E * trade enjoyed considerable advantages as the first online trading company, it fell to the second place in terms of online customer transaction volume. [Charlesschwab is the leading brand.]

Making a big advertisement in the mass media allows e * trade to survive. However, in the face of a huge operating deficit, how long can its advertising investment be supported? (E * Trade's revenue for the previous fiscal year was $0.662 billion, with a loss of $54 million, but the company's market value reached $6.8 billion .)

Why are we so sure that the private name Internet brand will eventually win the general name Internet brand? The only evidence we can provide is the history of one hundred years. In the past century, how many general brands have been successful?

Few.

In the world outside the Internet, there are few situations where generic brands are dominant in the market, and all of them are dominated by proprietary brands:

In the automotive industry, there are Ford, Chevrolet, Chrysler, regal, and Mercedes-Benz.

In the banking industry, Citibank, Chase Manhattan Bank, and Wells Fargo Bank are available.

In the pharmaceutical industry, there are CVs, eckerd, rite-Aid, Walgreen's, and Osco.

In the furniture industry, there are Ikea, ethanallen, Levitz, rochebois, and mauricevillency.

In the grocery industry, there are Kroger, Safeway, Winn-Dixie, publix, and Pathmark.

In department stores, there are Macy's, saksfifthavenue, wide allfield, Nordstrom, and neimanmarcus.

In the Discount Store industry, there are Walmart, Kmart and Tajikistan.

However, you may think that the Internet is different from the traditional industry.

The Internet is different from the traditional industry, but people's minds are the same. To succeed, the brand must be positioned in the customer's mind.

People's minds always regard generic names as the names of a type of things, rather than the names of specific things or brands. Managers usually forget this.

No car dealer calls his company "cars )". Why not? Think about the following conversation:

"Where did you buy your new car? "

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"Cars ?, Is the company registration name. "

"Ha, what do you mean? I ask you, from which dealer did you buy a new car? "

Thousands of websites use common names, and you should be able to think that such conversations are constantly happening.

"Which brokerage company do you use online? "

"'My discount brokerage company' (mydiscountbroker is the company name ). "

"I know, but what is the name of the company? "

"It's called 'My discount brokerage company '. "

"I have already asked. "

This is not a joke. It indicates the way in which the mind operates. In the mind, words are classified, and general names and proprietary names are not classified.

The classic baseball joke of the comedy combination of aport and Castel used obfuscation generated by replacing one type of words with the other type of words.

"Let's see who is on the base. Who is on the first base. 'How is the situation? 'on second base. 'I don't know' on the third base. "

"This is exactly what I want to know. Who is on the first base? "

"That's right. "

"I mean, what is the name of that guy? "

"Who '. "

"Who is the first baseball player? "

"Who is '. "

"Who was the first player? "

"Who is in the first"

"I am asking you, who is the first? "

"That is the name of the person. "

"Whose name is that? "

"Yes. "

In the last century, many companies tried to use generic names as their brand names. After checking the trademark registration, you can find a lot of brand names that try to use common names to seize a category. Some examples are as follows:

Toast 'Em.

Soft & dri deodorant.

Soft 'ngentle brand toilet paper.

Soft shave.

Nice nSoft facial tissue.

The NA brand does not contain alcoholic beer.

Baby's choice card disposable diapers.

Kids care card adhesive tape.

To be honest, do you have an impression of these generic brands? Probably not, because the general name brands are hard to remember.

Wright [Note: lite and light are pronounced in English, so it is easy to confuse] It is the best example of brand creation without a common name. Wright is the first light beer brand. There was no "Mei le" on the bottle when the company launched Wright beer. No competitor will use Wright as the beer brand because meile owns the trademark right.

Meile made a lot of advertisements for Wright, and the light beer category quickly took off. However, as you may have expected, many competitors have also launched light beer from generic brands, such as schlitzlight and coorslight ), budlight ).

Even if Mr. Wright is the first brand of light beer, even if Mr. Wright has a lot of AD and PR advantages, he is forced to admit failure and rename the brand millerlite ).

You can see the problem. The beer drinker entered the bar and said, "Give me light beer "). "The waiter said," Okay. What kind of beer do you want? "

Of course, some categories are also full of generic brands (the result of group convergence pressure ). Interestingly, none of these categories can be dominant. Breakfast cereals are good examples of brands such as cornflakes, branflakes, frostedflakes, and 100% granola ).

Taking oatmeal as an example, there are dozens of "oatmeal" brands that want to exclusive categories. Here are some examples of brands:

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Kellogg 'sall-bran)

Kellogg's sbranflakes)

Gloria's 40 + cereals (Kellogg's s40 + branflakes)

Kellogg's sraisinbran)

Nabesskey (nabisco100% bran)

Postbranflakes)

Postraisinbran)

Totalraisinbran)

Because of its preference for common names, there is a lack of clear leading brands for cereals. Sales of the largest grain brand is 6% of the market share. (Cheerios is one of the few cereals that do not use a common name .)

Since generic names do not work in the world outside the Internet, how can they work on the Internet? The problem is the same: how can potential customers remember the brand name and associate the brand with a positive feature?

If you use a general name as the brand name, neither of the above two points may be possible. First, potential customers cannot distinguish your website name from the category name. Secondly, you cannot associate a feature with a brand because your brand represents the entire category, not just your website.

Chapter 4 private name rules

The brand name exists independently on the Internet. Therefore, it is best to have a good name.

The tide of generic names leaves hope for the future. If you have a good idea and a good brand name, you are in a dominant position. When the General-name websites fade out of the field of view, you can initiate a flood attack to win.

Never make mistakes in brand names. Your name exists independently on the Internet and is your most valuable asset so far. This is one of the main differences between the Internet and the real world.

In the real world, there will be many clues about the company's business operations, such as geographical location, window display, and even the size and style of buildings. A hotel looks like a hotel, a bank looks like a bank, and a hotel looks like a hotel.

Even in the industrial field, you rarely only know the company name. Brochures or direct mail leaflets usually contain pictures of the company's product lines or services.

However, there is only a name on the network. You won't find any clues about the website before you log on to it.

In the real world, common names can also work, because other real lines can be combined to establish the company's identity. A table store looks like a table store.

For example, the location and appearance of a retail store may be so unique that customers often forget the store name. "Is the repair shop on the street 87 and on the corner of York. "

Even odd names can work in the retail field. For example, "Mattress Company" is the name of a bedding store, "Qian Zhuang" is the name of a household credit company, and "Volkswagen Nutrition Center" is the name of a healthcare store. Such names do not exist independently, but contain a wealth of clues to convey their real business information.

There is no clue in the electronic world. We can't see the book in the window to know that the Amazon website is a bookstore. There is no travel manual to tell you the price of priceline.com to sell air tickets, and there is no greeting card to tell you the Blue Mountains Network (bluemountain.com) what businesses are engaged in.

This leads to a mistaken network company and falls into the common name trap.

The temptation of generic names is so great that some companies do not have to pay for them, although these names are useless in the long run. A Los Angeles company spent $7.5 million on the domain name business.com. (We want to say to this buyer that if you buy this book for $21, you can save yourself $7,499,979 .) Some recent domain name acquisitions are as follows:

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Liquor network domain name (wine.com) for sale at $3 million

Telephone.com for sale at $1.75 million

Bingo.com (bingo.com) for sale at $1.1 million

Wall Street network domain name (wallstreet.com) for sale at $1.03 million

Drug network domain name (drugs.com) for sale at USD 823,456

University network domain name (university.com) for sale at $530,000

This is worse than mad cow disease in the Netherlands and underground mold in France. The recent bid for loans.com reached $3 million. (If you have a generic domain name, we recommend that you sell it before people become rational .)

Even in the early stages of Internet development, it has been clearly proved that proprietary names are more effective than common names. Several of the early big winners (US online, Amazon, price hotlines, and Yahoo) use proprietary names rather than generic names.

This issue is often misunderstood. People see a name like "Price Hotline" and think it is a common name. In fact, it is not. The common name of the industry it is engaged in is "ticket" or "actually" Your-priced ticket ". Ticket Network (tickets.com) is a common name in this industry, and we think it will not succeed.

(Of course, "price" and "hotline" are common terms, but they are separated from the original intention and combined into a private name "Price Hotline", which is a valid Internet brand name .)

A general name can also be a proprietary name when it is used to identify a person, a place, or a thing. Bird is a common name, but in larrybird and tweetybird, It is a proprietary name.

When you name your website, the first thing is to ask yourself, what is the common name of this category? This generic name cannot be used as the website name.

When naming a website, a private name is always better than a common name.

As the website name of female, ivillage.com is better than women.com. (Yes, there is a website called female. It spent $10 million in advertising fee promotion this year .)

As the site name for selling luxury goods, ashton.com is better than cyberluxury.com, eluxury.com, and firstjewelry.com.

In the real world, the same brand creation principles also apply. proprietary names are always better than general names.

McDonald's name is better than Burger King ).

Hertz is better than nationalcarrental ). (All car rental companies are national car rental companies, but only one is called Hz .)

Time is better than Newsweek or U. S. News & worldreport ).

Kafka (Kraft) is better than general foods (generalfoods ). Therefore, when kraftgeneralfoods decided to simplify its name, it called Kraft rather than generic food.

Of course, the universality of the general name is divided into different degrees. "Burger King" is not a common name. Hamburgerplace is the name of a hamburger-based fast food restaurant.

The uniqueness of a private name is also divided into different degrees. McDonald's and Hertz are more proprietary than the times. The times are a proprietary name that is separated from the original intention.

Similarly, Amazon and Yahoo are more proprietary than the price hotline and eBay, and the last two are all out of the common names used in the original intent. (Of course, all the differences are relative. Even Amazon and Yahoo can be common names. Yahoo is a beast, and Amazon is a strong and strong woman with a strong will .)

So to what extent should your network name be "private?

This depends on the situation. First and most importantly, make your network name considered as a proprietary name, and then you 'd better have a more proprietary name than your competitor's name. However, you also need to consider other factors.

In addition to selecting a private name, your website name policy is more effective if you can follow the following eight guidelines.

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(1) The name should be brief.

Generally, the shorter the name, the better. The short name is more important for Internet brands than external brands.

You must enter the website name in your computer, so the name should be short and easy to spell.

Many network names have two drawbacks, that is, they are both common and long, so it is difficult to remember and spell. The following are examples:

Artsourceonline.com)

Dotcomdirectory.com (network company index Network)

Ebusinessisbusiness.com (E-Commerce Business Network)

Expressautoparts.com)

Interactivebrokers.com)

Giftcertificates.com (gift certificate Network)

Onlineofficesupplies.com (Online office supplies network)

Treasurechestonline.com)

It is a good way to name a category. In this way, you get a short and easy-to-Spell name. For example, CNET.com is short and easy to spell.

Sandoz wants to name its OTC anti-influenza drugs, and the company uses theraflu as its abbreviation. As a result, this brand became the leading brand of similar products.

Nabisco wants to find a brand name for its vanilla waffles. The result is named Nilla. The strong brand Jell-O is short for gelatindessert.

The name of the nabeisk brand itself is the abbreviation of its former generic name (National Biscuit Company nationalbiscuitcompany. (There are many National Biscuit companies, but there is only one nabsk ).

Barnesandnoble.com eventually gave up this long and difficult name, abbreviated as bn.com.

Morganstanleydeanwitter is a very successful financial company, but they did not name the website morganstanleydeanwitter.com, but reduced it to msdw.com.

(However, the names bn.com and msdw.com are not good. We will discuss this in rule 9 .)

The famous boozallen & Hamilton obviously cannot use its long and complex name as the net name, so the company built bah.com. (It is not a particularly sweet name .) What Should companies like Deloitte and PricewaterhouseCoopers do?

The Internet will force many companies to review their names, even if the Internet is not a business but a media for these companies. Boozallen & Hamilton should not use the same network name as bah.com, but should change the company name to boozallen and use boozallen.com as the website name.

What about the following names: alleghany, Alipay, allegiance, anheuserbusch, Bausch & lomb, Alipay, digiorgio, Harnischfeger, Alipay, Sichuan, lecadianational, Marsh & McClennan, Alipay, rohm & Haas, scheringplough, smurfitstone, sodexhomarriottservices, synovusfinancial, tecumsehproducts, tiaacref, transmontaigne, Wachovia, Wackenhut, weyerhauser.

All these companies have difficulty transferring names to the Internet. None of them are small companies and are listed as Fortune Magazine's one thousand largest U.S. companies.

Due to the emergence of the Internet, many companies have to simplify their names. The US Post Service generally does not return a mail, unless the recipient name and address you wrote have serious spelling errors. But on the internet, you must be accurate and never miss a point or connector.

An insurance solution is to use both the product name and nickname on the Internet. Charlesschwab is an industry-leading discount brokerage company that uses charlesschwab.com and schwab.com on the Internet, although the company only promotes the name schwab.com.

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AskJeeves is an industry-leading search engine website that intelligently uses two network names: askjeeves.com and ask.com.

When you have to pick one from a few seemingly good names, it is usually wise to have a good nickname.

People will feel very friendly when they can use the nickname of the brand name instead of their full name.

BMW is called Beemer, not BMW.

Chevrolet is called Chevy instead of Chevrolet.

Coca-Cola is called coke, rather than Coca-Cola.

Budweiser is called Bud rather than Budweiser.

FedEx is called FedEx instead of federalexpress.

Apple Computer is called Mac rather than Macintosh.

(2) The name should be simple.

Simple is different from brief. Simple is related to the letter combination of the brand name. Simple words use only a few letters and then repeat them.

Schwab is a short name (with 6 characters), but it is not a simple name because it uses 6 different letters. This is why Schwab is not easy to spell.

Mississippi (Mississippi) is a long name (11 characters), but it is a simple name, because it only uses four letters, so most people can spell the word Mississippi.

Coca-Cola (Coca-Cola) is also a short and simple name. Although it has 8 characters, it only uses four different letters and repeats the pronunciation of "CO.

Pepsi-Cola is a much more complex name than Coca-Cola. Pepsi uses 8 different letters to form a 9-character word.

Autobytel.com faces the same problem as Pepsi-Cola. It has eight different letters. What's more, how do you understand this name? Is it autobytel or autobytel? What does bytel mean?

Even if autobytel is a proprietary name and has an early leader in the automotive category, we believe it will not become a leading website in the category.

Someone accused Nissan of deciding to change its brand in the United States from Datsun to Nissan. But from the brand name perspective, Nissan is a better name. Although both brands have 6 letters, Datsun uses 6 different letters, while Nissan only uses 4 different letters. (Now you seldom hear the name Datsun .)

(3) The name should prompt the category.

There are some contradictions. On the one hand, to become a big network brand, you need a private name. On the other hand, the name should prompt the category to which it belongs without falling into the common name trap.

It is not easy to grasp this degree. Compressing common names as brand names is a way to achieve two goals at the same time (such as CNET, Nilla, and Jell-O ).

Another way is to add an "unusual" word after the category name. For example, planetrx. (We don't like the word planet, because it is abused. Apart from the troublesome planethollywood restaurant chain, there are two online brands with planet, petplanet and planetoutdoors .)

For an online drug store, drugdepot.com is a better name than drugs.com or drugstore.com. The two buzzwords of drugdepot refer to the names of homedepot and officedepot in the real world.

We helped a company that plans to sell advertising products online set up a network name for brandbuilders.com. (The company sells hats, T-shirts, pens, binder paper, and other products used in the company's brand building project .) Later, we reached an agreement with the customer to shorten the website name to branders.com, which made it easier to enter the website.