Whether you are a domainer or an entrepreneur embarking on their first startup, getting the right domain name matters. I want to first give a tip of the cap for this story to Namepros member Verbster who posted a thread about this interesting article.
The post that appears on CustomerDevLabs.com is close to a year old but the information and usability is as viable today as when first posted.
Justin Wilcox gives a detailed analysis on both testing and getting feedback for a domain he and his partners needed for a new crowd funding start up. The one aspect I don’t agree with is that Mr. Wilcox only refers to domain investors as squatters. In 2013 (time of publication) people in tech should be well aware of the difference between a squatter and a legitimate domain investor. But anyway, on with the good stuff as he did an excellent job detailing the steps.
Using clever survey questions to quickly test the memorability, spellability and emotional response of potential domain names. Glad we did – almost picked a lousy one.
Problem: Domain Squatters
I’ve found what should be the joyous process of naming a company, quickly devolves into:
Founder A: Are you kidding with me?! How is every good domain taken!?
Founder B: Let’s make up a word. “ooFooVu.com” is availble.
Founder A: Maybe “KillerKittenKites.co?”
Founder B: TwoGirlsOneCup…dot ly is available.Most of the time we’re left with abysmal choices and forced to argue over which one sucks the least.
Some friends and I who were building a crowdfunding aggregator wanted to avoid all that, so we came up with a way to test our company/domain names with customer data. Here’s how…
Justin outlines 5 steps to follow:
1)Crowd source ideas
2) What to measure
3) Design the experiment
4)Run the experiment
5) Evaluate the results
This is a very detailed article and is not a short read, this is something that I think start ups, venture capitalists and domain investors should bookmark to refer back to when needed, this is a very valuable article for those looking to be thorough in their approach to choosing a domain name.
Read the full article here

Thanks for the post Morgan. I’ve learned these steps and lessons like many others have; by wasting hundreds of dollars on pigeon shit in the past. In any case, my eyes have learned to focus on more quality names that meet such testing requirements as the article your refer to states. I think this article could definitely help others in their quest as an investor or someone just seeking a great start-up name.