Quick!  Match the following menu items to the type of food.  Your choices are: Burritos, Fajitas, Quesadilla, Salads, Nachos and Tacos.  GO!!

• Alfredo Garcia
• Art Vandalay
• Billy Barou
• Close Talker
• Fat Sam
• Homewrecker
• I Said Posse
• Joey Bag of Donuts
• John Coctostan
• Pinky Tuscadero
• Ruprict
• Sherman Klump
• The Full Monty
• The Other Lewinsky
• The Ugly Naked Guy
• Triple Lindy

So, how’d you do? 

Beyond the fact that these names say nothing about the food items they represent, I don’t even recognize several of them from American popular culture.  Imagine now that you’re a foreigner that has never been exposed to TV. 

To be fair, this menu has descriptions of each item categorized by type of food. But the point is that if you were just looking at the name of the item, you’d have no idea.  To top it off, you have no frame of reference for Pinky Tuscadero if you’ve never seen Happy Days.

I noticed this the other night when I went to order Chinese food.  I was using the menu I pulled off of my mailbox and noticed that they only had the title of the dish.  I have to tell you ‘Happy Surprise’ doesn’t sound like something I want to eat.   Sticking to what I know – beef with Broccoli, I may have just missed out on a yummy dish. 

Same goes for websites.  You may think that your product names or site navigation names are cute and ‘hip’ - but do they have meaning?  If they are cute and funny, is there some kind of context?  Does your audience understand the language you’re using?  Be careful what you call things on your site, you don’t want your customers missing out on that ‘Happy Surprise’.