A good domain name is critical for a small business–but you rarely see small businesses using good domains.
Your local car wash might be austin-h20-carwash.com. Your dry cleaners might be mikesdrycleaning.net. These names aren’t memorable and have little value to customers.
But here’s a story about a small business with a great domain — and how this domain name was incredibly helpful to me over the past weekend.
A couple weeks ago I had my wisdom teeth extracted. (I should have done it a decade ago but kept putting it off.) Being a domain geek, I was impressed when I got my oral surgeon’s appointment card and saw his URL: jawpain.com. That’s a sweet domain. Most oral surgeons use their name or the name of their practice as the URL. But how many last names are easy to spell? And do you really remember the name of your dentist’s practice, or do you just think of it as “Dr. Smith’s office”?
My surgery went well and I was healing quickly. After just a few days I was back to eating solid food (if you’ve had your wisdom teeth pulled you know what a great feeling it is to move from applesauce to chicken). Last Sunday my wife and I stopped in at Jason’s Deli for lunch and I ordered a sandwich. I ate a few bites of that sandwich and relished in my ability to eat solid food again. But then something happened. I was chewing when I heard a loud SNAP! As I bit down again I noticed my top teeth weren’t hitting the bottom where they were supposed to and my jaw was in severe pain. I knew something bad happened, but we were away from the house and I didn’t have my oral surgeon’s emergency number available.
The fastest way to get this number was to look up the doctor, so I called a friend to look up his number. The yellow pages weren’t handy, and looking up the doctor by name would be difficult (as it can be spelled several ways). So I asked my friend to look up the number on the JawPain.com web site. In my state of pain and panic there’s no way I could have remembered how to spell the doctor’s name and I had no clue the name of his practice. But JawPain.com? That’s memorable.
Luckily I didn’t dislocate my jaw, but I tore a muscle. I’m back to liquid foods, which is a bummer, but I’m still thankful I was able to reach my doctor over the weekend thanks to his memorable domain name.
Very interesting story.