How important is your domain name?

I was talking to a friend of mine who runs a small speciality retail store. In his niche market he is a doing pretty well. He feels that one of the reasons for his success is his choice of name, for both his store and the domain.

Let's say his business sell backpacks (it doesn't) and he has chosen as his store's name "Backpack Barn". (he didn't) Well, the name of the store matches the domain (backpackbarn.com), and the first word in the domain is what you will find in the store.

Is there any benefit is calling it"Jim's Backpack Barn"Apart from a bit of vanity, not really. The customer is looking for backpacks, not Jim.

The name of the commodity that he is specializing is in both his store name and his domain name As a result he has three of the top four listings when you search for "backpacks" and the city he is located in.

Does it have an effect on his business? About 1/3 of his sales come from people who found him via Google.

If he'd given the store a more exotic name, "The South Col", "Coasts and Couloirs", or "Sea to Summit", he would probably not be getting the same results in Google. Just goes to show how critical a good Google result in particular, and search engine optimization overall have become for an B2C business.