Whats in a name?
Talking about apps…
As we are constantly in the business of putting names to things and most recently are starting to put out (what will hopefully become a slew of) apps.
Thought would share some of the research that we have done and just general thinking on in the space. Basically there are two schools of thought with a third popular hybrid:
1. name is something unique and simple (i.e. redBoxx ) – this is critical in the age of twitter, google, etc as you have something unique people can filter you one from any information stream.
2. name something descriptive (i.e. red photo share box) – this works well for SEO and now in the app store and the like on auto-completion before you actually search.
3. the hybrid – have a simple prefix (i.e. rokt ) then attach descriptive suffixes to it (i.e. rokt pictures, rokt videos, etc)
The removing of the last vowels also can achieve this effect. Driven by the necessity of short domain names it also led to distinctive filters (i.e. flickr, tumblr, etc). I have no problem search or finding those things.
But this little rant is about apps. Its very hard to build a brand. Its much easier to appeal to a users basic impulse desires when they are browsing searching etc. Also when you through in the mechanisms of how iTunes indexing works the key (or at least my current thinking) is simple but descriptive names that index well. A good example is Kortina’s upcoming app – i365 Workout of the Day – its got a bit of unique branding with “i365” (though he may run into trouble later as Seagate has some TM’s on that) and a clear description of what the app does.
If a user is searching for an app and put “workout” it will filter to it – the rest of the appropriate keywords he can put in the body so the results drive users to his app. Over time if he releases more apps he can continue the “i365” and start to build a brand.
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