Week 17 (December 2018)
Welcome to Domains in the Wild. In this series I post images of domain names that I've spotted out and about in the real world. Then I write a bit about what I think of each one. It's easy to miss domain names, but they're all around us and play a key role in a companies branding, messaging and design. Spotting them and taking a photo is sort of a fun hunting game to play while you're out and it takes very little effort once you start looking for them. Once you start to play, you will start seeing domains everywhere without even trying.
If you catch any yourself, please share them with us all in the comments.
Without further delay, here are the domain names that I found in the wild recently...
The Domains
It's just a handful of random domains in the wild this week. I've been finding so many lately but just not a solid theme to tie them all together other than the fact that they're domains in the wild! Anyway, let's take a look!
ZipCar.com
The first domain up is ZipCar.com. This domain belongs to Zipcar, a car-sharing network with cars in multiple cities and campuses around the globe. This particular domain was spotted on a sign for a ZipCar reserved parking space.
As far as the domain goes, in my opinion this is an excellent domain. This is exactly what you should be looking for in a domain when starting a business or investing in domains for that matter. It's short and simple, easy to spell, easy to say, easy to brand... It's perfect really.
WallingfordFamilyDentistry.com
Next up is WallingfordFamilyDentistry.com. This domain belongs to a small dentist business in Wallingford located in an old craftsman style home.
The domain is an exact match of their business name which is good, but for me it's too long. I wouldn't invest in names that are this long and so specific to a neighborhood. In my opinion it's not a good idea to name your business after a neighborhood or other local geographic area like a city name because if you ever move, expand or sell your business you're now tied to that area and this can cause a lot of confusion as well as possibly rebranding costs.
SLUMarket.com
Next up is SLUMarket.com. This domain belongs to the South Lake Union neighborhood market website that is used to promote the neighborhood market and other events.
I'm not a fan of this domain, it's easy to read the word, "slum" first when you look at it which is reminds me of when they named the new trolley in the area the South Lake Union Trolley... aka the S.L.U.T. I'm also just not a fan of combining acronyms with words. Either do one or the other but not both because it's confusing and you'll have to explain it to people more than you should or would with a good domain name.