Changing your name takes balls

I thought I’d write this piece because a promising Irish web business has just taken the ballsy decision to re-brand and god knows I have experience in that area (although my experience was less about initiative and more about public pressure).

Revahealth.com today became WhatClinic.com and I think it could be a big turning point for them, even though they’ve already proved very successful since they launched. Here are some of their stats, and it’ll be very interesting to see the effect on these numbers over the coming months:

- 500,000 unique visitors per month

- 1,700 leads generated for clinics per day (e-mail and phone)

- The average value of an enquiry is €2,000

Anyone who’s ever been involved in an online business will realise how impressive these stats are, but at the same time they’d understand what a huge decision re-branding the website must have been for the WhatClinic team.

Time for the rough cost-benefit analysis:

If you’re not meticulous when it comes to the re-direction of pages and all the SEO aspects of a change in domain, Google will bitchslap you and your traffic will drop like a stone. With 500,000 uniques per month in the bag, a mistake on the re-branding could cost WhatClinic up to 50% of that traffic, if not more. Now, if they lost 50% of their traffic it would be equivalent to losing probably 6-8 months of hard work/cash and it could effectively shut them down so it’s not a decision Caelen and the team would have taken on a whim.

So, why would they decide to do something so risky? Because the potential upside is very big…and it’s worth it! Why is it worth it?

- Revahealth.com while it worked was not as memorable a domain as WhatClinic.com and word of mouth referrals might increase based on the fact that it’s easy to remember;

- The new domain explains exactly what the website does, it helps you find what clinic would be best for you and it’s always good to say what you do on the tin;

- It’s very easy to spell and get right, and therefore leakage is minimised; and

- Hopefully they’ll rank even higher for google searches of ‘what dental clinic to use in Swansea’ etc. which could provide a massive boost to their organic traffic.

All in all, I think it’ll prove to be a very good move for them and could see them move to the next level and become one of the very successful Irish web businesses which I’d be delighted to see as I’m a big fan of Irish web businesses, a big fan of their service (I’ve used it) and a big fan of the guys involved…and because I know how meticulous they are when it comes to SEO I’m pretty sure they won’t end up reeling from a Google beating.

Congrats to them on having the balls and the good sense to take the chance.