Importance of Business Name

[mikey_w]

How important is a business’s name?

Does something like “MVK Consulting, Inc.” sound too stuffy for a web design company?

Or do I need some fancy, artsy-fartsy name?

[ralphm]

Unless/until you’ve got strong brand recognition, I favor names that clearly indicate the service being offered. “MVC” won’t mean anything to anyone, so it’s kind of wasted space, imo. Something like “**** Web Consulting” might be more useful.

Obviously it’s a bit boring, though, so then there’s the other option of creating something memorable and inventive. The only problem with that is I find those names are often really hard to remember until they become well known. As an example, there are some online shopping carts that are all pretty similar. They all have creative names, but the only one I can ever remember is Shopify. The other names just won’t stick in my head—which I think is a big problem for them.

[mikey_w]

@ralphm

Unless/until you’ve got strong brand recognition, I favor names that clearly indicate the service being offered. “MVC” won’t mean anything to anyone, so it’s kind of wasted space, imo. Something like “**** Web Consulting” might be more useful.

That was an example of using a person’s initials.

@ralphm

Obviously it’s a bit boring, though, so then there’s the other option of creating something memorable and inventive. The only problem with that is I find those names are often really hard to remember until they become well known. As an example, there are some online shopping carts that are all pretty similar. They all have creative names, but the only one I can ever remember is Shopify. The other names just won’t stick in my head—which I think is a big problem for them.

For a business that builds website for other people, is branding as crucial as if I was trying to sell a product or service directly (e.g. Target, Uber, PetSmart, Citibank)?

In the past I have always had my boring company name, but then I have never had a website or been trying to sell my services in this capacity - I just got work through recruiters and my company was just a way to save taxes.

[ralphm]

@mikey_w

For a business that builds website for other people, is branding as crucial as if I was trying to sell a product or service directly

I guess you’re always trying to sell a product or service to someone. But I don’t know anything about this stuff, so just trying to apply some kind of logic to it.

I just figure that a name that says something about you or the business is better than something like MVK, which is just a waste of breath imho. But I guess it doesn’t really matter in the long run. If you need a business name for legal reasons, it could be anything.

I recently worked with a guy whose business name was Lastname Consulting (replace Lastname with his last name), and it didn’t matter to me. I happened to know him, so I didn’t care what his business was called. But neither you nor anyone else reading this will have any idea what kind of consulting he was doing. (It had nothing to do with web consulting. )

[Gandalf]

MVK Consulting means nothing to most people. What sort of consulting? Consulting engineers, medical consulting? As Ralph suggests MVK Web Consulting would be better. Better still, if you’re building websites would be MVK Web Design - it does what it says on the tin! Too many people call themselves consultants when they’re nothing of the sort.

[mikey_w]

@ralphm

I just figure that a name that says something about you or the business is better than something like MVK, which is just a waste of breath imho. But I guess it doesn’t really matter in the long run. If you need a business name for legal reasons, it could be anything.

I see where you are coming from, but in the modern world maybe it isn’t so crucial.

If people need “web design” or “web development” those are the terms they will Google - much less so a company name. And if they do Google your name directly, then it is familiar enough that you have them on the hook anyway, right?

I don’t mind creating a new name, but here are the catches…

1.) It could take me months to come up with a great new name, and in the mean time, that means I can’t move forward with building a brand with my current name.

2.) I might be able to do a DBA (“Doing Business As”), but I think that complicates things since the IRS has been getting taxes filed under my current name for over a decade.

3.) If I create a separate company, that just doubles my tax bill, since I have to pay my account to do the taxes for two businesses, versus one business which includes my day job and this new side business I am looking into.

I think my current name is fine, but obviously something popped into my head - maybe it’s called hope for greater things - that said, “Maybe you need to treat this like a brand new business?!”

It seems like the most practical solution is to move forward with what I have (i.e. S-Corporation, established tax-base, domain name, server account, etc), and then down the road if I feel it is warranted to break things into a separate company - because business is so great - then I can do that.

Of course, if you all think my name sucks and is hurting me, then I am open to suggestions.