Amazon. eBay. Priceline.com. Now Fatbrain, because great minds think a lot. Fatbrain used to be Computer Literacy, a good descriptor but a lousy brand name. And if you want to succeed in online retailing, you better create a strong brand. Brands are the richest currency on the Internet. Without one you're lost. A great brandname can take a lackluster line of products and make it hot. Amazon.com comes to mind. Simple concept (any book in the world) with a great name.

What makes a great name in this new and wildly changing online world? First, don't think descriptor. What if eBay called itself Auction Online? What if Amazon.com titled itself EveryBook? I'm skeptical of CDNow. When they bought Music Blvd., I expected the merger to use the name Music Blvd., which has more ring.

Brand names pop when they depart from description. Would Wallmart be such a great company if it were called Discount Plus? Think of M&Ms, Kleenex, Sony, Kool-Aid. Some brand names get magical by association with their products. The product enchantment sticks to the name. After all, Disney started out as some poor artist's last name. It's similar with Rolling Stone, Haagan Dazs, Apple.

Brands are more important on the cyberstreet than on main street, and for good reason. In the concrete world, you can launch a store in 50 cities and still there's tons of room for competitors because you can't be in all areas of all cities. But in cyberspace, who needs two bookstores that offer every book in print?

On main street, there's plenty of room for Barnes and Noble to live side-by-side with Borders Books and Book Star. They can copy each other and still prosper. Same with Starbucks and Caffe Seattle, or Kmart and Wal-Mart. But why on earth would anyone bother to visit barnesandnoble.com after learning their way around Amazon? Certainly not because it's a closer drive.

On the Internet, a good brand translates into marketshare. There's no equivalent in the concrete world. A brand can help a mainstreet company gain customers, and if the brand offers quality, the brand name will help retain those customers. But on cyberstreet, the brand can translate directly into marketshare since you encourage customers to come directly to your site. If they like their experience, they are not likely to go shopping, not unless another brand starts making considerable noise.

The smart brands are targeting the newbie. Those who are new to the net are better consumers than the cybersavvy. Experienced websters believe they have a right to free information. They get offended if they're required to pay. Just ask Michael Kinsey, editor of Microsoft's Slate, one of the premiere online magazines. After failing to sell subscriptions, they gave away access to Slate. If Microsoft can't figure out how to get cyberpros to pay for quality information, the rest of the world doesn't stand a chance.

Even with a strong brand like Slate, advertising can't be trusted with make up the difference. Click through rates on banner ads have been falling steadily. In time banners will become a minor source of web revenue. The future of net commerce belongs to those who can grab the spend-happy newbies as they discover the Internet. There's plenty of them to go around. 45% of those online right now were not online a year ago. And these folks are very susceptible to branding since they are not as tech oriented as the older websters. They want to go straight to a brand they can trust. They don't want to mess around with Boolean searches.

The brands succeeding in web commerce share a couple things in common. They give free information as an encouragement to visit a site that sells products, and they advertise offline. Advertising in traditional media, from magazines and newspapers to television and radio, brings newbies directly to the sites. Who cares where you show up on the search engines when your customers go directly to your site.

The new brands such as Priceline.com catch the newbies before they have a chance to wander around, and they keep their customers by adding new features continually to make sure the competition doesn't have a newer feature.