When my customers come up with a website concept, the often pick a domain name for their URL and hinge the whole project on that one idea.  For example, a customer might come to me and say, “I have this great idea for a new site about soda.  I want to call it coke.com.  I think that URL will generate me a ton of traffic.”.  Naturally, their bubble bursts when I point out that the domain coke.com is likely taken already.  “What?  The whole thing needs that URL to work!”, they explain.

If your web project is based on a URL alone, I mean the whole idea is that you have to get a specific URL, then your project isn’t a very good idea, no matter what the idea is because your project is a gimmick.   Yes, gimmicks can make money, but most gimmicks don’t.  You are far better off building a sound idea and then getting a URL that works and not getting a URL and building a sound idea (a gimmick) around it.

The reason I was thinking about this is that I met with a client last night and the client did one of those things that everyone like me hates.  The client came up with an amazing idea based on the tiniest bit of information based on something that was so obvious that I should have seen it myself.  Then the client was kind enough to tell me I should do it, instead of taking my great (almost) idea and running off and doing it themselves.

So, I was thinking about that idea last night and I came up with an amazing URL for the idea to live at.  The URL is so amazing that it might make or break the project, I was thinking.  When I got in front of the computer, I thought to myself, “What if the URL isn’t available?”  It was a great sounding, short URL, maybe it wouldn’t be available.

Then I remembered, don’t worry about it.  The project isn’t a gimmick, it is a valid business idea.  If I can’t get the URL, I’ll use something else, it really doesn’t matter.  Of course, the URL was available… all that worry for nothing.  It was however a good lesson.  Don’t pin your project on a URL, make a project and find an acceptable URL for it.

Every had a bad URL experience?  Tell me about it.