Expens’d Forgot a Line Item for Domains
Thursday, October 16th, 2008
Expense tracking startup joins list of horribly named web companies.
Expense tracking company Expens’d didn’t budget any money for a decent domain name, and ended up with Expensd.com (notice the missing ‘e’).
I’ve seen plenty of poorly name companies in my day, such as Flickr.com. But Expens’d is entering an impossibly crowded field and can’t afford for people to have difficulty finding its web site.
This how a pitch to a customer would sound:
Company: Check our our web site for expense tracking — Expens’d.
Customer: Cool, I’ll check it out. What’s the web site?
Company: Expensed.com. Err, but without the ‘e’
Customer: Oh, so x-pensed.com?
Company: No, the last ‘e’.
Customer: The last e? So e-x-p-e-n-s-d? Do you have a business card or something so I can remember it when I get in front of my computer?
Look, I don’t believe you have to have the perfect, category killer domain to launch a web site. But you have to have something that’s easy to remember and easy to spell.
No related posts.
What’s even worse is that the domain name you have to type into the address bar is spelled EXPENSD.COM, but when you actually manage to find your way there, it’s shown everywhere on their website with an additional comma, as EXPENS’D.
Haven’t these guys heard of the radio test for domain names?
Marg – I think the answer to your question is ‘no’.
Another domain that’s confusing belongs to Telecom New Zealand and its major e-mail provider, xtra.co.nz. When people give you their addy they always have to spell each letter of the word X-T-R-A.
It’s even more confusing because you wouldn’t normally expect there to be one letter LESS in a word like extra LOL.
“nothing ventured, nothing gained.”
Yes, the domain is what we (as domainers) would call a “typo”.
But, aren’t we now talking about the site – Expensd.com?
How many hits do you think they will get because of articles similar to this one?
Maybe, they couldn’t afford to pay $10K, $25K, or $50K for Expensed.com?
Maybe, their strategy of using an unique domain might be catchy enough to be remembered?
How many experts in 1930 told the beverage company that their new product “7up” has a terrible name?
(DNW quote)
” Customer: The last e? So e-x-p-e-n-s-d? Do you have a business card or something so I can remember it when I get in front of my computer?”
They should build on the “e” theme.
The first “e” is for excellent product or service.
The second “e” is for the continous evolving of our program. (or easy to use.)
The last “e” was REMOVED because we will never be considered expensive compared to all of our great advantages to the customer.
(The theme could be easily polished by a professional marketing strategist. I only spent 1 minute thinking about it.)
Since, the domain is only 2 weeks old, I give this guy a lot of credit.
I see that the alexa ranking is #732,000.
Not bad.
If the creators of DomainNameWire (or DNJournal) listened to the experts, they would have never started with those domains.
They would have been told that anything other than News.com is destined to fail.
Aren’t we glad they didn’t listen to the experts?
Good luck to the owner of http://www.Expensd.com .
Ricardo,
I don’t believe you need a generic one word domain to be successful. What you need is something easy to market and easy to spell. What you have described is not an easy marketing message. And the domain certainly isn’t easy to spell.