In order to name the App and the cake shop, I read hundreds of articles about product naming, but none of them had complete logic.
Some people say that it must be easy to understand and functionality must be prioritized; others say that the key is to highlight the brand and create cognitive differentiation. Regarding the former, should Xianyu be called Second-hand Goods, and should Oxygen be called Underwear Guide? Regarding the latter, is App Store not as good as Wandoujia , and is MissFresh not as good as Aixianfeng?
Those articles are like 95% of the business analyses on the market, which deduce causes from results. The conclusions may not be wrong, but the way of thinking about the problem determines that they are neither profound nor comprehensive, so they are bound to produce a large number of contradictions , which is essentially no different from the argument that "rich people did not study well when they were young."
For an Internet company, the name of an App actually has limited impact on the ultimate success or failure of the project, as long as it does not make fatal mistakes. However, through the naming process, we can deeply analyze the user's perception and usage process of a product, which is of great significance to the company's long-term marketing plan.
Please keep in mind that the following is just our actual thinking in the product naming process. It does not conform to strict MICE principles. Due to limited time, we will give the conclusion directly: The art of app naming is a game between the product's functional description and the brand's recognizability .
From the perspective of market positioning
Product type: The name of fertilizer must be simple and easy to understand, while the name of women's luxury goods should be a string of letters that is incomprehensible. Clarifying the function and category of a product is the first step in product naming. As a lifestyle service + social app, the names of currency conversion and weather forecast tools are too direct, and content products like LOFTER and OPEN are too abstract. "Play in the city" itself is not a mature category like "travel", "food delivery" and "finance", so it is not a good idea to name it "XX Play" like Baidu Maps and Tongcheng Travel. In summary, the tone of our product naming should be to strike a balance between functionality (play in the city) and recognizability (brand symbol).
Target group: The name Enjoy certainly does not cover as wide a group of people as Dianping.com, but its core target users - white-collar workers who love to show off - will feel that they are at the top of the contempt chain of Dianping.com users because of this. As a consumer platform with an average customer spending of over 100 yuan, we must ruthlessly abandon the preferences of our Diaosi users and create a sense of belonging above the middle class for our audience. In my core target user survey, the penetration rates of products such as Keep, Enjoy, Xiaohongshu /Wall Street Journal, NetEase Cloud Music, and Curiosity Daily are extremely high, but no one has Meituan Group Buying on their mobile phone. The penetration rate of IOS is over 90%, and the iPhone penetration rate among female users is 100%. In fact, if I hadn't been a Note5 and P9 Plus user and hadn't argued for the Android upstarts, our products would probably not have Android versions. In the last event, I received some names with a strong nerd vibe, such as "Add me", "Call me", and "Please take me with you". I just glanced at them and rejected them.
Company size: If a large company has a mature brand, it does not need to worry about P&G's product line naming principles and Trout's positioning theory (Apps and fast-moving consumer goods are two different things). It can directly use product line extension to reduce users' selection costs, such as Baidu Takeaway, WeChat Reading, JD Finance, and Ali Travel. It doesn't matter that there is no association between Baidu and Takeaway, or between Ali and Travel. But as a new company, if it also adopts the brand + category naming method, the brand name should be related to the category, such as Cheetah Clean Master and Tuniu Travel. As a new company, our brand name must be associated with the category.
Market stage: General Motors, General Electric, Standard Oil, Wanda , Wantong, Vanke. In the early stage of a market, the user's mind is not yet polluted, so vague, generic, and comprehensive names are easy to occupy the mind. But when the market reaches a mature stage, new companies must choose precise and differentiated names to distinguish themselves from existing competitors. The same goes for apps. As I said before, I will not make another one just for fun when my phone is already full of apps like DingTalk, Momo, Tantan, Renren, Papa, Chat, Baobao, Paipai, Nuannuan, Huihui and Huihui. It’s not because reduplication is bad, but it’s no longer appropriate at this stage of the market.
From the perspective of user path
There is a wonderful consumer model in Chapter 9 of Professor Hua Shan’s book "Super Symbols Are Super Creativity". The idea behind this model is similar to the TTPPRC I wrote before. It includes the complete path of interaction between a product name and the user and all usage scenarios (in some scenarios, some links can be cut out). It is my most important reference for product naming.
Audience = Attraction + Memory
The first role of the user is to know your app as an audience. In this process, an excellent name must do two things: the first is to attract the user's attention, and the second is to make him remember it. This creates an inherent conflict between being easy to understand (functionality) and being original (recognizability).
Generally speaking, highly recognizable names are easy to attract attention, such as "Lonely Rescue", but the cost of remembering is high. "What to play" is easy to remember, but its recognition is too low to give users strong stimulation, and it is extremely easy to get lost in the next search + purchase link. "Escape Plan" was an answer I really liked in the last naming contest, but unfortunately it has little relevance to fun and is more suitable for travel products.
Don't forget the sound propagation of the name, avoid erhua sounds, avoid polyphones, and avoid homophones!
Buyer = Search + Buy
The time interval for a user to transform from an audience to a buyer varies. If he sees your app while searching for keywords in the app store and decides to download it, then the interval may be only a few seconds. If he hears about your app from a friend at a party by chance, and suddenly remembers to download it a few months later because of a usage scenario, the interval may be as long as half a year.
In the process of users transforming from audiences to buyers, the recognizability of the product name becomes the most important factor (if they can remember it), especially in the scenarios of searching and downloading apps, where the app is often placed together with similar products!
If I name the App "Go Play", it means that users need to go through layers of fog in the App Store to find my product accurately among "Go Play?", "Go Play", "Go Play", "Love to Play", "Fun to Play", "Fun to Play", "Go Play", and "Go Play", which is too difficult.
In fact, whether we are searching or buying, when we humans make any choice, we naturally reject choices of the same category. Let's make an assumption, there are five apps called "Let's go play", "Let's play", "Let's play", "Let's play", "Love to play" and "JOIN". If their functions are exactly the same, but you can only choose one, most people will probably choose the last one. For specific reasons, please refer to "The Paradox of Choice".
Finally, while ensuring a certain degree of recognition, be sure to choose a name that can be typed directly on iOS and Sogou Input Method by default to minimize the user's input cost.
Always keep ASO and SEO optimization in mind!
As an aside, TTPPRC is not particularly easy to remember (it is still much better than TCDPRD, which has six irregular letters), but it is invincible in SEO and is generally a good name.
Experiencer = Arousal + Use
When your App has been securely downloaded to the user's mobile phone, the user's role becomes an experiencer. At this stage, the importance of recognition is reduced and functionality prevails again because you have few competitors left in the same category.
At this point, the main function of the App name is to occupy the user's mind. When the usage scenario appears, he will think of your product first. For example, Dianping.com has been able to book movie tickets for a long time, but when most people think of watching a movie, they will still open Maoyan Movie or Time.com first. The latter two occupy the user's mind in the movie category from a more vertical perspective. From this aspect alone, "What to play today" and "What to do after get off work" are both good choices, but considering other factors, they are unlikely to appear on the mobile phones of the proud middle class.
Communicator = Active + Passive
The world's largest marketing scene is taking place all the time, in your and my lives, and most of it is spread by word of mouth (in your country, spreading WeChat screenshots has gradually become an important channel). Communication can be divided into two situations: active communication and passive communication. The former is when the communicator actively tells others, and the latter is when the communicator introduces something when asked by others. Any great app will inevitably have a stage of viral growth relying on existing users as spreaders, rather than the CAC accurately calculated through channel delivery.
If you want users to spread your name, being catchy and unambiguous is only the second key factor. The most important thing is whether the name of your App can make users want to spread it actively. Specifically, whether the spreader of your product can gain a sense of superiority? Furthermore, whether your product can make people who use it feel superior on a spiritual level and be willing to spread it. Enjoy means high-end group buying, but spreading Enjoy can give me a sense of superiority that I am a person who pursues quality life. If its name is "High-end Group Buying" and other things remain unchanged, the style will be completely different.
All dissemination is for the sake of superiority. Every communication will become the acceptance and memory of the next round of audiences.
From the perspective of brand value
Visualization:
Many brands design their own mascots and include them directly in their names, such as Tmall , Run Bear, and Beaver House. Some brands have names that evoke animal associations, such as the kangaroo in e-bag wash, and some have names that have nothing to do with the names, such as Meituan Rabbit and JD Dog. In a short App name, whether to directly include the name of a mascot is still a game of functionality and recognition.
My thinking on making choices is as follows: If your app’s category has a well-known super symbol and no competitors are using it yet, it is a good idea to strengthen the image in the name. For example, an app for home massage could be named "Hua Tuo Arrives." Otherwise, the mascot does not need to be directly related to the name. The fox of "TanTan", Brown Bear and Connie Rabbit of Line can still be deeply rooted in people's hearts.
One disadvantage of using cartoon animal images is that it may reduce the brand's sense of hierarchy. If it does not match the brand's tone, do not use it.
Design and surroundings:
The product name is the most important part of the brand and must be consistent with the design style. For example, a UI with black and white as the main colors and a cold and aloof style is totally incompatible with "What to play today".
Your product name will not only appear in the App Store, it will also appear with the Logo and other VI schemes in PPT, promotional posters, bus stops, target audience frameworks and other places. However, it is difficult for me to connect the names collected in the last naming activity, such as "Have Fun with the People", "Looking for a Companion", and "Three Missing One", with textured designs.
Apps with English names have an advantage in that they can design beautiful brand-related products, such as team work clothes, customized souvenirs, etc., which leaves a lot of room for subsequent marketing activities. Looking at the T-shirts in Keep’s own store, I can understand why some people would spend money to buy them and wear them out. But no one is willing to wear the "Dot Energy Exercise" or "Joy Running Circle" on their body.
Emotional resonance:
The highest level of a brand is to find the source of the text. A good name represents a spiritual appeal that can evoke resonance deep in the user's heart, making him feel a strong sense of belonging and a desire to spread the word. For example, my favorite publications, such as Curiosity Daily, Wall Street Journal, Go Home for Dinner, and More Beautiful, all belong to this category.
But this kind of emotional resonance should be positive. Why even though I like "Loneliness Rescue" very much, I only want to use it as the company name rather than the product name. People are lonely, and our App does not need to remind them of this repeatedly, but directly provide a positive solution, such as the light-collecting machine and the "Escape Plan" mentioned earlier.
Summarize:
The above three analysis angles and 11 sub-categories are my thinking methods in the naming process. Each dimension actually revolves around the trade-off between "product functionality" and "brand recognition". This is why naming is ultimately an art rather than a science. Just like no matter how many of Li Jiaoshou 's copywriting methods you have read, you still can't write Li Zongsheng's "over the hill". No matter how useful a model is, it is only an aid to thinking. Anything related to text still requires some inspiration.
Finally, it is important to remember that choosing an app name is an exclusive decision because there can only be one. Whichever one you end up using means giving up all other options. That is to say, a good name is finally chosen, and it should be strategic.
What is strategy? Strategy is to give target users (namers) reasons to abandon competitors (other alternative names).
![[In-depth] How to name an App?](/upload/images/67cc4d5e2bd32.webp)
