What’s in a (domain) name?

31. May, 2008 Categories: usability by Mike Linskey 3 Comments

A new wrap platform called “Novia”, built on InfoComp’s technology, made a bit of a splash in the trade press when it broke cover recently; the name means “new way”, apparently.

Unfortunately, for a proposition that will be delivered primarily via the internet, it’s online presence at launch is very much in keeping with the “old way”; don’t these guys get any of this interwebs thingy?

Suppose you are interested in finding out a bit more about Novia (like I was); what to do? Let’s go and have a look around cyberspace by starting with the name, Novia, and the obvious urls…

www.novia.com Hmmmm, “Novia Internetworking”; it’s a possibility, I suppose. And with that strapline “put all your eggs in one basket, and then watch that basket” it certainly fits with how some view wrap platforms. After a bit more reading, it’s a dead end; these guys are ISPs.
www.novia.co.uk Success! Noviawrap! Ooops; maybe not – apparently this noviawrap is fully recyclable. Is this some sort of automatic churning feature built into the platform? That’ll go down a storm with a lot of old model advisers! Ah, wait, this isn’t Novia “a new way to wealth management”, this is Novia “the cost effective padded postal pack”.

Oh dear, that’s frustrating; the obvious urls don’t work. Lesson 1: don’t just dream up a fancy name for your internet-based business – make sure that the url is available too! Why? Usability guru Jakob Nielsen has the answer, as usual…

How about a Google search, then? “Novia wrap” returns a few links to press articles from the usual suspects, but still no sign of a proper corporate website (unless you are into “Wrapping & Strapping: Great value corrugated paper”). C’mon, it shouldn’t be this difficult, guys! And as you haven’t done your search engine optimisation , it’s unlikely to get any easier, either. Lesson 2: if you’re going to bother having a web presence, make sure it is indexed properly by the search engines (get those meta tags filled out; leaving them blank is just plain lazy). You might even invest in a few adwords to at least look as if you know what you are doing!

If you don’t help The Big G out, you end up with search results like this:

To cut a long and very boring (by now) story short, I eventually found the website url by stripping the domain name out of front man Bill Vasilieff’s email address, which was tucked away at the bottom of an article I found on IFAonline: www.novia-financial.co.uk

So, after all that, what do you get? Not a lot, as the hobbit-turned-magician might say; a simple logo, forgettable strapline, and a couple of lines about future site development which haven’t quite worked out. I first visited the site on May 19th to read that “Further pages will be added later this week with more detail about our new wrap service and information on exciting careers with us.” Well, it’s two weeks later, and nothing’s changed; disappointing. If you can’t keep this service promise, what does that say about any others you plan to make?

This isn’t the first time I’ve seen this sort of thing happen. It’s usually as a result of a traditional (i.e. paper-oriented) marketing person/team being let loose on the web and trying to impose the same process; it just doesn’t work!

Hands up! Who signed off the name before checking the url was available?

The internet is your shop window (in this particular instance it’s the primary means of delivering the wrap service); it should be treated with respect and fear, and handled only by suitably-trained monkeys!

And your corporate url should be a highly treasured asset (it helps if it is unambiguous, as well), which makes it all the more surprising that the following domain names hadn’t been registered… …until very recently ;o)