Arghhh! Another 'help with a name' Thread - sorry!

[AlicePalice]

www.bellalunaphotography.com is gone too. damn, really liked bella luna!

[dakwegmo]

If you like Bella Luna, try something like blphoto or blphotography, you can still name your business Bella Luna, without owning the exact domain name.

[AlicePalice]

Do you think? Even though there are so many other photographers out there using it (albeit in america?) What if someone is just trying to find me, without having seen a card, and they got one of the other photographers. And Im guessing google searches wouldnt come up in my favour very well.

www.thebellaluna.com and www.thebellaluna.co.uk are both free though

[AlicePalice]

bellalunapix.com and .co.uk is also free (and pics). Do you reckon confusion value there or not?

eta, and bellalunaphotographic.com and co.uk too

arghh I dont know what to dooooooooo!

[dakwegmo]

Do you have to have your website and domain name the same thing, no. Does it help, I doubt it. All of the big players out there have websites that are identical to their company name, but only because they paid a premium for it. Delta Airlines used to use delta-air.com because Delta Power Tools owned delta.com. The airline eventually made the power tool company an offer they couldn't refuse, and they sold the name to the airline for a few million dollars. The point being, your website and business name don't need to be the same. It doesn't hurt with branding, but I doubt it's going to help all that much.

I would avoid using "the" at the front of a domain name unless you also own the domain name without the word "the" in front of it, or you intend to always refer to your business with the definite article.

I think bellalunapix.com is a good choice. Plenty of people already associate 'pix' with pictures, so it's not likely to be too confusing. Potential customers are also more likley to understand 'picks' with an 'x' rather than alice with a p.

[AlicePalice]

I just mean, it would be so easy for someone to get the wrong photographers site, i.e. not mine!!

And isnt pics / pix still confusing in the spelling-it-out factor?

blphotography is taken too - gah!

[steelese]

So here are the things I learned from the degree in marketing.

If your name stands out too much it can be distracting. It is logically a Red Herring that you notice at first, but since it has no real reference to the business you may forget it.

Different is good though. All I see is for photography studio names are photography by (first name), or (last name) Photography. This works in some cases, and as an artist it appeals to my ego, but I know that if I did this, it would blend in with everyone else.

Here is a case study. GOOGLE. The name is simple. Frankly, it doesn't stand out all that much, but it seems different. We are familiarish with the term. It is vaguely mathematical or techy. So it works with the company. The name sticks in our head because of all the associations.

The other thing we like is similar sounds. When sounds are similar we remember the better. GOOGLE does this. The G sound at the beginning of each syllable gives us repetition of sounds and we like that as humans. BlackBerry does the same thing.

That brings us to the last item I'd like to talk about. Brevity and punchyness of sounds. The BlackBerry was originally going to be named the StrawBerry because the buttons looked like seeds on a strawberry. The marketing department thought better. The sound Straw is a long and arching sound. When you say it your inflection goes up on the 'st' and down on the 'raw'. This is too long to remember. Black inflects at the beginning and decrescendos from there. It is also much shorter.

So these are the main tools we are taught in marketing. You can choose to use one or all of them. Oh and just so I remember, plays on words aren't too good either. It's the red herring effect we talked about earlier.

Then again, there are lots of successes that break every rule in the book. Though, not everyone can be the exception, and don't fool yourself into thinking you are.

[candleman]

Originally Posted by steelese

So here are the things I learned from the degree in marketing.

If your name stands out too much it can be distracting. It is logically a Red Herring that you notice at first, but since it has no real reference to the business you may forget it.

Different is good though. All I see is photography by pick first name, or Random last name Photography. This works in some cases, and as an artist is seems to appeal to me, but I know that it if I did this it would blend in with everyone else.

Here is a case study. GOOGLE. The name is simple. Frankly, it doesn't stand out all that much, but it seems different. We are familiarish with term as something vaguely mathematical or techy so it works with the company. The name sticks in our head because of all the associations.

The other thing we like is similar sounds. When sounds are similar we remember the better. GOOGLE does this. The G sound at the beginning of each syllable gives us repetition of sounds and we like that as humans. BlackBerry does the same thing.

That brings us to the last item I'd like to talk about. Brevity and punchyness of sounds. The BlackBerry was originally going to be named the StrawBerry because the buttons looked like seeds on a strawberry. The marketing department thought better. The sound Straw is a long and arching. When you say it your inflection goes up st and down on the raw. This is too long to remember. Black inflects at the beginning and decrecendos from there. It is also much shorter.

So these are the main tools we are taught in marketing. You can choose to use one or all of them. Oh and just so I remember, plays on words aren't too good either. It's the red herring effect we talked about early.

Then again, there are lots of success that break every rule in the book. Though, not everyone can be the exception, and don't fool yourself into thinking you are.

excellent stuff.. good post.
i'll bear this in mind.
i might get you to critique my bisiness name when i'm ready to roll it out..

[AlicePalice]

Thank you very much for your input everyone.

I have registered www.bellalunaphotography.co.uk as the .com is one of those crappy search engine pages which is selling for $4000, so I reckon (hope!) that it will stay a crappy search engine so people wont get confused between me and another photographer.

I decided against pix and pics because I would have to register them both to save the confusion.

I am aware that there are a couple of other photographers using bella luna as their name but they are in america so I hope it won't be too much of an issue.