How to choose the best name for your e-commerce brand?

Your brand name shouldn’t be chosen lightly. It has to meet several criteria to make an impression, but also to please search engines. You need to be creative, adopt a name consistent with your business as well as the image you want to convey, and think about SEO. Here are our tips for choosing the best brand name for your e-commerce business.

Check that your brand name is available

Whatever your decision, you must always check that the brand name you want to adopt isn’t already taken. Besides checking with the INPI (the French trademark office) and Infogreffe for registered trademarks, check online that your name isn’t already in use, even without a trademark registration.

To check the availability of your brand name, visit the INPI trademark database or the Infogreffe database. Also check that the name isn’t already used on the main social networks: Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, or Twitter.

If a name you like is already taken but not registered, you can register it yourself, but you’ll expose yourself to difficulties, since you’ll create confusion. This can be all the more damaging if the other company has a poor reputation that could tarnish your brand. On the other hand, don’t use the name by simply changing the extension (.com, .fr, etc.). Here again, you create confusion, which is never to your advantage.

Think about your target audience

Before settling on your brand name, you’ll have worked on your target audience, particularly through your market research. Keep that audience in mind when creating your brand, because the name won’t be the same depending on age, social category, geographic coverage, etc. Pay particular attention to this last point: if you include a local reference, the name may not be well understood beyond the region; if you use a word from a regional language, it may be very difficult to remember and to type into a search engine; if you’re aiming for international markets, the name needs to be easy to pronounce for as many countries as possible, and so on.

Watch out for meanings in foreign languages

If you invent a name to give it a foreign-sounding tone, check that you haven’t unluckily picked an existing word that means something completely unrelated to your business, or that’s outright a swear word.

This happened a few years ago to a French car brand that wanted to give an Asian-sounding name to its latest model. Unfortunately, the name turned out to be an insult!

Don’t overuse English

Use English words sparingly. The use of this language needs to feel justified. That’s the case for businesses related to the corporate or tech world. However, it’s not the case if you sell accessories for dogs and cats. If you sell local or “made in France” products, using English words becomes contradictory and counterproductive.

Study your competitors

Analyze your competitors’ brand names to better understand how your target audience perceives them. You can draw inspiration from them, but never copy them, of course. Don’t venture into choosing a name that’s too close to create confusion and benefit from your competitor’s reputation. You’d expose yourself to legal action, and the public would tend to see you as a lesser, presumably lower-quality copycat brand. In any case, you’ll need to make sure the name isn’t already taken.

Think about the future

Your company name should be timeless. Avoid using a word linked, for example, to a technology that might be outdated in a few years, or to a trend that’s bound to fade.

Also avoid including the year, which will inherently look dated and obsolete before long.

Create a short, punchy name

Avoid overly long and convoluted names at all costs! Your brand name should be easy to remember, and for that, not too long.

You can use real words or invent them from scratch. Think about syllables that can be replaced by a single letter — for example, “O” for “water” if you sell water purifiers. You can also blend two words together to form a name that’s both evocative and easy to remember.

Evoking your business

Ideally, people should be able to guess your industry just by hearing your brand name, thanks to an evocative name. Wordplay can be interesting, but it shouldn’t be too heavy-handed. If you fall into corny puns, you’ll come across as somewhat dubious and low-end.

An easy-to-remember spelling

Watch out for convoluted, hard-to-remember spellings, since a simple typo can send your visitors to another site or lead to an error page that discourages them from searching for you online.

Think about SEO

Your brand name will inevitably be tied to your domain name, which is factored in by search engines.

Do keyword research

For SEO purposes, it’s very valuable to include a keyword that matters in your industry within your brand name. Do some research to find out the search volume on Google and other search engines.

Avoid accents

Accented characters are absent from URLs and from many foreign languages, which is why it’s best to avoid them.

Reserve multiple domain extensions

When you register your domain name — ideally including your brand name — reserve several extensions. For example, if your domain is in .fr, reserving the .com as well is wise so that no one can take advantage of your name once you’ve built up your reputation. Registering a domain name only costs a few dozen euros a year, which is a small price to pay to protect your brand.

Test your name with people around you

You naturally lack perspective when it comes to choosing a brand name, which is why it’s essential to test the name with people around you. Ask especially people who aren’t familiar with your project at all, so they can be completely objective.

Tell them the brand name and ask them:

• what the name evokes for them;
• whether any particular feeling comes to mind;
• whether they find it easy to pronounce;
• whether they know how to spell it;
• what their first impression is;
• whether it reminds them of a competitor, and if so, whether that competitor operates in the same field;
• whether they think they’ll remember it;
• whether they have a better idea!

If these tests go well, it’s time to launch!