Alfan Hendro

After spending millions on promoting O.co moniker, Overstock.com apparently backtracked the effort.

At a glance it seemed that O.co is so much better than Overstock.com, with all the right ingredient of the perfect brand: short, easy to remember, sightly mysterious. But if really look into it, O.co has a major shortcoming which can cause major problem for the business.

What do you think it is? You would probably know it too, just trust your feeling.

Need a hint?

Ok. Pretend you want to visit the site. Try type in O.co in your browser URL bar. So that’s
O – DOT – C – O – ENTER

You got that? The problem with O.co is that it’s too short. Our brain has been wired to type in 8 character domains, 12 characters, or even more. And if it’s too short, somewhere in our nerve system it feels lacking. It feels incomplete, and uneasy.

Here is how long the URL for these popular sites:

Facebook.com – 12 characters
Youtube.com – 11 characters
Amazon.com – 10 characters
Google.com – 10 characters
Yahoo.com – 9 characters
Ebay.com – 8 characters
QQ.com – 6 characters

So how to find the best brand and domain for your site? Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try short domain, but really, beside trying say it loud, try also to type it in the browser URL bar and get the feel of it.

So, I joined Founder Institute Jakarta. That’s an incubation program with very interesting system. So far we had sessions from Adeo Ressi, Andy Zain, Eka Ginting, Izak Jenie, Martin Hartono, Scott Rafer, and KF Lai. The mentors are all awesome, and some are crazy, but well, that’s another story.

In the program, we are split into groups, with whom we work closely to discuss ideas and questions. Yesterday there was this interesting question from a peer in my group.

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You know how I put down 3 ideas, but somehow all 3 are the same (as in all are software/hardware gadgets). What do you all think if i just say my company wants to make cool and creative gadgets (—, —, —, because all 3 require more or less the same components anyways, but different software
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Here is my answer to it.

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I feel like I understand a bit on your dilemma.
So here is what I think, and is hopefully somewhere close to what the mentors will think as well.

That is what I can say from my personal experience.
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When I say it’s from personal experience, I meant it.

I started SG-House.com in February 2006 and Singapore-Restaurant.com in September 2006, and plenty of other sites also in the same year. While Singapore-Restaurant.com was started 6 months late, the site quickly catch-up with SG-House.com and in December already match the traffic.

So there is relatively strong growth Singapore-Restaurant.com . Which should have been trigger for me to spend more time on the restaurant site than the property site. But it didn’t happen.

At that time, I work on both sites during my spare time after day job. Everytime I think about my sites, it was always about SG-House.com. I felt that Singapore-restaurant.com has bigger chance for growth, but I just can’t bring myself to work on it. Everytime I’m on my laptop, it’s SG-House.com. Whether checking analytics, making small tweaks, or submitting to online directories, SG-House.com is the only site I could focus on.

I think the connection is there with SG-House.com cause I personally experienced how hard it was to find good rental. But for Singapore-restaurant, there is hardly this connection; I have meals from time to time in various restaurants, but it’s more or less depending on mood and situation rather than deliberately choose the best restaurant.

In 2010, iProperty.com.sg and PropertyGuru.com.sg are both excellent, easy to use property sites with big resources. Mission accomplished. So I sold SG-House.com to iProperty. By right, I should come back and work at Singapore-Restaurant.com , but still it doesn’t happen. There is simply no chemistry there. And without chemistry, it doesn’t work.

Well, why I’m writing this? It’s actually more of a reminder to myself. Cheers…