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Kathie Lee Gifford needs to spell this for you

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Kathie Lee Gifford spells this company’s name out for you because otherwise, you can’t spell it..

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We often talk about the radio test when it comes to domain names. If someone hears the name of your website can they spell it when they type it into their browser?

The same goes for apps. When someone goes to the app store to find an app, can they spell the name correctly?

Name Ninja Bill Sweetman sent this commercial featuring Kathie Lee Gifford to me. It’s for an app called Takl. But it’s pronounced tackle, like tackling a job on your todo list.

If you hear the name of the app there’s no way you will know how it’s spelled. Unless the company spells it out for you, and that’s just what they have Kathie Lee Gifford do at the end of this commercial. Click the image at the top to watch the ad, especially the ending.

The company uses the domain name Takl.com.

NameLabs seeks to test your domain or company name

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Service quickly validates name choices.

A new service called NameLabs promises to help entrepreneurs decide which of their candidate domain names (or product/company names) is best.

NameLabs uses the wisdom of crowds to get feedback on which domain name is best and if it has any hidden drawbacks.

For $29, NameLabs will survey 50 respondents on various aspects of three candidate names with a 24 hours turnaround. Panelists test the names for the radio test, memorability and emotional associations.

One clever aspect of the service is that you provide an audio recording of your three names and the panelists are asked to try to spell the names. It’s a simple way to figure out if your domain name choices pass the radio test.

NameLabs says that its panelists sign a non-disclosure agreement that forbids them from registering any of the domain names they review.

If you do the math, panelists are not making much for each name review. You might take this into consideration when considering the quality. Still, I think using the service could uncover some surprises that entrepreneurs have not considered when brainstorming names.

That’s Zero, X-E-R-O

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This company’s name (and domain name) is hard to spell.

I was listening to a podcast yesterday and heard an ad for Xero (prounounced Zero), an online small business accounting program similar to Quickbooks Online.

Xero is a nice looking name. It’s short and easy to remember once you see it.

The problem is that it literally fails the radio test. As a result, about a quarter of the commercial was spent explaining how to spell it.

“That’s Zero… X-E-R-O”.

So it’s not really that good of a domain name. If you tell someone to visit Xero.com and don’t tell them how to spell it, they’ll end up at Zero.com.

Google owns (but doesn’t use) Zero.com. It would be a real bummer for Xero if someone bought Zero.com from Google and used it for a financial products or service. That’s an entirely logical use for Zero.com.

A name that failed the “radio test” was hurting this real estate business

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Old name led to a “word-of-mouth” issue for company.

TripleMintTechnology-driven real estate startup TripleMint just raised $1.65 million from investors. It’s also changing its name from one that caused it problems.

TripleMint used to be called Suitey, a name that I don’t know how to say, and if someone told me about it I wouldn’t know how to spell it. My guess is it was a play on “sweetie” and the real estate context of “suite”.

Co-founder David Walker explained that the old name was “really hard to say and spell,” creating “a bit of a word-of-mouth issue.”

Indeed, TripleMint is a lot cleaner and I can’t think of alternative spellings. (Triple Mint is a real estate term, kind of like Triple Premium is in the domain name business.)

A BuzzFeed article explains that the new name has its own issue, though. It’s also the name of a real estate brokerage in Austin. Although the recently funded startup owns TripleMint.com, the Austin firm has the matching twitter handle.

(Thanks Bill.)

Startup domain name fails: 68% fail radio test

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Majority of companies attending startup conference have problematic domain names.

Name Ninja recently performed an analysis of the domain names used by startups going to the Collision conference in Las Vegas next month. The domain name consultancy found that only 21% of companies have the “ideal” domain name for their business.

A whopping 68% of company’s domain names fail the “radio test”, meaning they are not spelled the way they sound.

It’s pretty easy to spot some of these names on this page of exhibiting startups: CloudKeyz, Dooing, Snapd and Atmospheir all jump out at me.

In addition to failing the radio test, some other issues include:

  • Domain name matches company name but is not .com (17%)
  • .Com domain with appendages (e.g. “The” or “Get” in front of the name) 9.6%
  • Domain hack (2%)

    • 80% of the companies analyzed use .com domains. .IO and .CO were the next most popular with 4% each.

    An infographic with the results is available here.