Domain name has two critical flaws, and it literally comes out in a radio commercial.
On my way home from an event last night I heard a radio commercial for Capitol Hyundai, a Hyundai dealer here in Austin. I couldn’t believe what I heard:
“Visit Capitol Dash Hyundai dot com…don’t forget the dash”
Wow. That’s bad. And it just goes to show how any domain with a hyphen fails the radio test.
If you forget the dash, which a lot of people do, you’ll end up at Capitol Hyundai of Columbia, South Carolina.
What makes this even worse? Many, if not most, people will spell “Capital” with an ‘a’ instead of an ‘o’. The misspelling is currently unregistered.
If we didn’t live in a society where lawyers were quick to fire off a cease and desist letter or file a UDRP, I’d register that typo and give it to them. But I did something similar for a local government agency a few months ago, and they still haven’t returned my phone call to get the domain name from me.
Jamie Zoch says
CapitolDashHyundai.com is also available, which is another potential typo and clearly the typo of it.. CapitalDashHyundai.com and I’m sure people may have a hard time spelling Hyundai to boot.
This would be a good case to go away from your “brand” and use a catchy, easy to spell and remember domain name instead.
jblack says
Hyundai itself is a bad radio-domain word. That dealership probably could just as easily confuse Texans hearing Korean name cars by using a Korean IDN on the radio 🙂
Bo says
This an example of a company spending little for the domain name and spending lots to make people understand their cheap domain. A company should pay for a good domain instead of wasting money on the radio trying to explain their bad domain name when they should be pushing their product. Bad decision to buy that domain.
C says
Capitol-Hyundai.com is a trainwreck of a name for numerous reasons, the least of which is the dash. As has already been mentioned, a large percentage of people are going to spell Capitol with an A. I would bet if you plucked 50 random people off the street, less than 10 could correctly spell Hyundai. The dash, while obnoxious, just adds more blood to an existing catastrophe domain.
Names like this are positively AWFUL for real world marketing. If you want to make your main page Capitol-Hyundai.com, that’s actually fine. If you’re going to use your name in a conventional marketing campaign, then spend the money on a marketing peripheral name that clears the radio test (LowCostCars.com, YourNewCar.com… Names like this that ‘domainers’ laugh at since they don’t represent search terms, but are fantastic marketing tools for companies that ‘get it’)
C says
Oh, and to add…
I don’t see anything wrong with emphasizing something like a dash, a .org, etc when marketing offline. We have a client who developed a .US name as his primary site, even though he owns the c/n/o of his domain. We made him a little graphic showing his domain.us, with a little American flag growing out of the .US as a visual to help people comprehend and process that the name isn’t a .com. Per stats, his .com bleed is substantially less than 1%.
NameTrader says
Hyphen + Hyundai = hyou’re going to be lucky to get anyone coming to your site. Heck, even capitol would often be misspelled as capital…I’m surprised they don’t spell out the name in the ad for how bad it is!
Both .org’s are available as are the .us’s – as much as they should be inclined to just buy a better name even if it strays from the brand as someone mentioned earlier, if they’re going to register something while sticking with the brand, register their business name in a different ext. Yea they’ll lose SOME traffic to the .com, but it’s a negligible amount compared to people lost to non-hyphen .com. Hyphened names are perfectly fine for SEO purposes (which pretty much is limited to generic names), craptastic for about anything else since early this decade.
Rod Schwartz - Grace Broadcast Sales says
The dealer should have sought professional help before launching this unfortunate half-baked effort. Now he has to incur additional (and otherwise avoidable) expenses to mitigate the effects of an unfortunate decision.
He might be able to turn this situation to his advantage thus:
1) Secure some additional relevant domain names, e.g., “MyAustinHyundaiDealer.com” or “HyundaiforAustin.com” or “AustinTexasHyundai.com” and have them all point to the same URL (his current domain, with the dash).
2) Create a light-hearted radio campaign built around the multiplicity of domains (“you can visit us online at —- …or —–
…or even —–) Heck, just GOOGLE us. Type in ‘Hyundai’ and ‘Austin Texas’ and we’ll show up”)
3) This could even generate some free publicity in local press, as reporters and feature writers get wind of the back story. I’ve seen it happen before.
4) Bottom line is getting prospective car buyers TO the dealership (via the website). HOW they get there isn’t nearly as important as that they get there.
So, there’s one possible course of action that just might turn this lemon into lemonade.
Your mileage may vary.
-RS-
Courtney says
I just want to say it is unfortunate for all you people to be so obsessed with a website. I work for the company and plenty of people get to our website everyday. We have encountered no problems with the name, since majority of people these days are computer savy. For one person to think that a radio campaign is wrong is understandable, but for so many people to comment on it is ridiclous. Companies are going to advertise and always come up with new ways to do it, so it sticks in the consumers mind. Obviously its working….all of you are talking arent you? It works, and you all need to put your time to better use. Its an add people, get over it.
Andrew Allemann says
Courtney – since you work for the company, may I suggest you register the domain name capital-hyundai.com and forward it to capitol-hyundai.com? It will cost you $8, and if it saves you one customer who might end up visiting another dealer, you’ve made your money back many times.