#+title: S01|LO7 - choose a store name (that you won't regret)
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* Links
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- [[../../toc.org][TOC - ecomm clubhouse]]
- [[../../_share/data/video/step_01/lesson_07.mov][video]]
- [[https://www.shopify.com/domains][Shopify’s free Domain Checker]]

* Notes

* Description
The truth is, from what I’ve seen, when customers are browsing online for products, they don’t actually care what your store name is called. The only thing customers actually care about is that the products in it look cool.

They also care if your store has the best products in it and if your store is the only place they can buy your products from. Which, thanks to print on demand, can often be the case, since you can create unique and original designs exclusive to your store.

You can create and design unique, original designs that no one else has, and stand out from the crowd, even as a new store. So that’s why when I see people get hung up on choosing a store name, frustrated at coming up with one, I want to tell them to stop worrying about it too much.

I do not believe your store name will make you more in less money in the long run. It’s all about the products that you’re selling.

** checking for name availability

But there is 1 extremely important factor that you need to keep in mind when you’re choosing a store name. And that is to make sure that the name is actually AVAILABLE before you waste any time on it.

1) So, to check that on Etsy, come to your internet browser URL bar.

2) Type in this URL along with the name of your store. So let’s say I did that to check if the store name, Geography Designs, was available.

By doing this, I would see that it is not available: someone else has taken it.

Before you go ahead and do anything, like create a logo, you absolutely want to check if it is available so that you don’t waste your time!

So, trying again, this time I did a search to see if the store name Geography Design was available. When I did that, Etsy didn’t show me that a store of that name was open.

But you can see it redirected in the URL bar to a personal account. That means that a person has privately taken this name already for their Etsy store, and it is unavailable.

*** testing a name

So I tried again. This time I typed in Amazing Geography Designs. This time, it didn’t redirect to a person in the URL bar. And it instead just came to an error saying the page doesn’t exist, instead of it redirecting to a member error page. This means that the store is available, and I could go and start using this name myself on Etsy.

#+caption: set up http://www.etsy.com/shop/ in your url bar
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[[../../_share/media/img/step_01/lesson_07/ex01a.png]]

#+caption: add the name in the url after 'shop/'
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[[../../_share/media/img/step_01/lesson_07/ex01b.png]]

#+caption: the name is already being used
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[[../../_share/media/img/step_01/lesson_07/ex01c.png]]

#+caption: try a variation of the name
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[[../../_share/media/img/step_01/lesson_07/ex01d.png]]

#+caption: and you can see it is NOT being used
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[[../../_share/media/img/step_01/lesson_07/ex01e.png]]

** using .com domains

But what if you’re not selling on Etsy? Well then, you’ll want to make sure that the .com URL is available for it.

To do that, you can come to the Shopify Domain tool. I’ll have a link to it on this page. Please note, that URL is an affiliate link. Using it is optional, but it’s always appreciated!

By doing this, I was able to see that amazinggeographydesigns.com is available and I could purchase it. You can also see that it suggested a different URL, .net instead of .com. I usually do NOT recommend picking this.

It’s been studied and from what I’ve studied, customers trust .com domains a lot more than other domain names, like .store and .net.

Google also trusts the .com domain name a lot and from what I’ve also studied, historically has ranked websites using it much higher in the results.

The one exception would be if you were only targeting a specific country that wasn’t the USA, such as Canada. If you were targeting Canada customers only, you could buy the Canadian domain name: .ca. Or if you were targeting UK customers only, you could instead buy the UK specific domain name, .co.uk

But, if you’re primarily targeting either America, or a global worldwide market, then I’d recommend sticking only to a .com domain name.

** use .com even if you plan to only sell on etsy
What if you don’t plan to open your own store with Shopify and instead just plan to sell on Etsy? Do you need to bother with this?

And well, if that is you, I’d recommend only using a name that you can buy the .com for anyway. Because you never know, in the future, if you’ll want to expand potential income streams to earn more money by opening your own store off of Etsy, and diversifying.

** chatgpt can help finding names
There is 1 tool that has helped me a lot in coming up with store names, and that is ChatGPT. You can use any AI chatbot you like, it doesn’t have to be ChatGPT.

You just come and tell ChatGPT what you’re doing, that you’re creating a new store. Now that you’ve most likely picked your niche, you can tell it what your niche will be, and give it some limitations, such as asking it to only make the names between 2 to 3 words, and explain to it who your target customer is, and the types of products that you’ll be selling.

And then, you can just let it do its magic, and come up with different names for your store. You can use these, or modify them, or ask ChatGPT to keep making you new names, until you find one that you would like to use in your store. And of course, you’ll need to make sure that it is available to be used as well.

#+caption: chatgpt prompt
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[[../../_share/media/img/step_01/lesson_07/ex03a.png]]


#+caption: chatgpt results
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[[../../_share/media/img/step_01/lesson_07/ex03b.png]]
