Now that you have you naming team and the appropriate tools you can begin.

It is very hard to come up with effective single word company names unless you are going to makeup a word such as ZOHO or Rollyo, therefore chances are your brand will be two words. Break the problem down and brainstorm for individual words.

a) Words that describe your product/service category
b) Words that differentiate yourself from your competitors
c) Words that describe your company benefits

Once you have a good range of words then you will inevitably start putting together possible combinations. Put your words into one of the following 3 column in your spreadsheet, a) Category, b) Difference, c) Describe.

You may have to repeat this through a few sessions.

4. You have a possible name? Now sleep on it.

Once you have a name that you think may work, sleep on it. It may sound great at the end of a long brainstorming session but do you remember it and still like it in the morning?

Run the name through your criteria again. At this point you have to be strict, don’t try and manipulate it so that it gets through. Maybe more brainstorming time is needed.

5. Test It

Don’t start asking your friends and family what they thought. You need to test it on your customers – your audience. Post the name on a forum (it may be worth registering the possible domain before doing this) and see what people think. Make sure that the feedback comes from those who are not in your organization or know you well.

The truth about how we came up with our name.

Whilst reading this article you may have been putting Design Fusions through the criteria that we set out, and you probably would have noticed that our name does not adhere to some of these. After a long time trying to come up with our name in the beginning we settled on Design Fusions mainly because we thought that it was catchy and and presented our creative flare for producing great custom websites which are ‘fused’ together with great development. We are therefore pushing the difference between ourselves and our competitors.

The only problem that we found with our chosen name was the ‘s’ on Fusions. This was sadly limited by the fact that Design Fusion was a taken domain. However, there is the potential for us to take the name in the future, so, watch this space.

Domain Names

As an online company I would strongly recommend registering a .com domain. Maybe even make it one of your criteria. If you can’t get the .com then get a new name. There are those who would argue with this, but not having a .com is going to constrain your online presence. A large majority of people will just search for the .com and won’t try others such as .me, .net, etc. You just want someone to hear your company name and go there and not have you explain the URL. Don’t try and get round this problem by hyphenating your words either.

If you are really set on your name and the .com is already registered, then you may have to consider spending a lot of money to buy it off of the current owner. In the end this may prove to be a great investment.

To conclude…

It really is worth taking the time to find a good name. If you invest in the process, you really won’t regret it. You don’t want to end up thinking, “I wish I had thought of that” further down the line when it is too late. So, good luck with your name hunting.