Lexicon Branding Finds Searchability Is The Most Important URL Metric
SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Among the many challenges of creating a new name for a product or business, getting the URL is often one of the most difficult. With over 130 million .com domains registered, securing a domain name for your brand can prove difficult, costly, and sometimes impossible.
For your new brand, the good news is that URLs with a brand + descriptor + .com suffix are both easier for you to secure and the preferred format for your customers to find.
In a 2017 survey of more than 1,100 adults, Lexicon Branding found that the most important website metric is searchability.
David Placek, founder and president of Lexicon, set out to learn how consumers actually use URLs to find websites that are new to them, as well as those they had visited in the past. The design used a traditional market research survey format coupled with an active search component to observe respondents' online search behavior in realtime.
Dr. Aaron Snyder, Lexicon's Director of Special Projects, was shocked to find that, in the realtime observations, almost no one typed in a complete URL when navigating to a new website.
Here is what they did instead:
- Over 95% used a search engine, relied on autofill with a partial URL, or followed a hyperlink to find a new website.
- Fewer than 3% of people claimed to use the full URL address when navigating to a new website.
- When asked to find Lexicon's website, 86% quickly found www.lexiconbranding.com, which uses a descriptor in its address, without typing out the full URL.
Interestingly, although this test was randomized across a variety of name types, a single URL configuration was preferred. The winning formula was not the BRAND + .COM pattern.
Instead, respondents revealed a preference for URLs with a BRAND + DESCRIPTOR + .COM pattern. This held whether the name was a made-up word, a real word used arbitrarily, or even a descriptive term.
Contact:
Aaron Snyder
[email protected]
1-415-332-1811
About Lexicon Branding
Founded in 1982, Lexicon Branding is a branding firm that specializes in developing brand names for companies and products. Located at the food of the Golden Gate Bridge in Sausalito, California, their work includes such well-known marks as Pentium, Dasani, Swiffer, Febreze, Subaru Outback and Forester, among many others. For additional information and to see other work by Lexicon, visit www.lexiconbranding.com.
SOURCE Lexicon Branding
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