What's in a Name?

Juliet:

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose

By any other name would smell as sweet."

Romeo and Juliet (II, ii, 1-2)

Good question; Does the name of your Bot make a difference to your customers? I would argue that "Yes it does" and I hope to persuade you to reconsider your naming choice and what you use to advertise yourself with.

I'm a web developer and I have been building websites for longer than I care to admit. The same problem plagues me today as it did when I first began and that is: What do I call it? Arguably the most important and least important decision you will ever make when starting a new site. Most important because it defines how your future site will look, feel and make that impression on your clients and least important because people will never go to your site directly but instead find it from search engines like Google or Bing. And yet I have spent hours and hours mulling over different ideas for clever names, using name generators to give me ideas, even thumbing through a thesaurus in the hopes of finding a cool sounding synonym for something I could just have easily said with simpler words. It all comes down to the simple dilemma of; do you choose something short and easy to remember or long and clever to impress.

The same applies to your Bot's MTGO user name. Fortunately for us, there are still many good choices available to pick from. Unfortunately for our clients, we are notorious for choosing really really bad names. Ok I know that you could argue that by choosing a name with a underscore "_" at the beginning, thus spoofing the alphabetical sort, you win on two fronts; first your name will sort with other underscores and therefore be simpler to pick out and second it will be on the top of your client's buddy list. STOP right there! This is where you may be mistaken and instead are pushing away your loyal clients.

You need to consider several factors here. The first is that thanks to great Bot engines like MTGOLibrary.com, you can keep credits for your clients that have not fulfilled a full tix in purchases and therefore your client will want to remember where their left over credits are kept. For us Bot owners, it makes sense to go to the MTOGLibrary.com Control Panel and use the "User Credit" button to see who we have credits with. But for our customer, they will more than likely add us to their buddy list. Being at the top of their list may be good for exposure, but if your name starts with _________1__ then rest assured you will be removed and forgotten as soon as possible to get rid of the eye sore. By choosing a name that looks appealing like "Aboshan" or "CardBotStore" you will see that your customer does not mind having your Bot name on his buddy list.

This also applies to the MTGO Search function in the Classifieds scene, our default Google search. If you choose a name they can easily type, then they can easily retype your name in search but if they have to count a bunch of underscores to input your name into the search, you will possibly loose them like a long domain name would a web user. Do I still need to type the "http://"?

The key to a great Bot that makes you money is the same for a website. Create a name that reflect's your identity and product and you will see your repeat customers make your Bot a preferred vender and ultimately a long term Buddy.