Don’t waste too much time on picking a perfect name for your product. It doesn’t matter very much.
One thing we learned early on talking to Basecamp customers: Many of them didn’t even know that the app was called Basecamp. They called it “GroupHub” or “ProjectPath” because that was their project URL. Didn’t stop them from using it (or paying for it) though.
And what about picking a name that’s available as a domain? HighriseHQ.com and Backpackit.com have worked fine for us. Search is the way most people wind up finding us anyhow.
Obsessing over a name is an easy time trap to fall into when you should be focused on more important obstacles (i.e. building something that people truly want to use).
Robert
on 27 Apr 10I’ve run into the same problem on some of my projects. I was burned out by the time I was half way through picking the name, domain name, and working on the layout.
Chris
on 27 Apr 10Or company names – why is it 37signals? ;-)
Ty Fujimura
on 27 Apr 10I was initially unfamiliar with project management software, and the name helped me understand why exactly I should give basecamp a shot. I think it’s the perfect metaphor… you don’t always climb with your team members, but you get together regularly at basecamp to review and prepare.
So hey, for some people it doesn’t matter, but for me at least it helped sell me on the idea of project management, if not the basecamp product in particular.
You’re right on about the urls though: I wrote a blog post about this a few months ago and used you guys as an example: http://www.tyfujimura.com/journal/urls/
Sjoerd de Haan
on 27 Apr 10We usually decide upon a product name by seeing what the product does.
It manages and sends mailing lists: Interactive Mailinglist (interactive because of the company name being interactive studios).
We made a project manager: Interactive Project Manager. Saves a lot of time, since the discussion is not even started. Everybody knows what a product name should be.
Sjoerd Interactive Studios The Netherlands
Sayam Khan
on 27 Apr 10I love reading your posts but I honestly don’t think this post is good advice.
If I had to choose either between finding a good name or working on kick-butt product, then of course I should work on a kick-butt product. There are priorities.
But you don’t have this dilemma all the times and good product name ideation deserves attention.
IMHO, a simple, easy to use, memorable name is essential. So people can talk to each about it.
Would you rather be an ecosystem of “Basecamp”, “backpack”, “highrise”, “campfire” (all words related around growth, upward mobility and teamwork),
or be:
“Project Management Pro”, “File Cabinet Plus”, “Realtime Group Discussion Forum” or “Customer Relationship Management Elite”?
Of course, you chose perfect names.
I would not recommend you if you were “Customer Relationship Management, Platinum Edition 2010”.
:—)
ML
on 27 Apr 10Sjoerd, you said, “We usually decide upon a product name by seeing what the product does.” The danger with that is fencing yourself in. Going overly specific means you’ll wind up with a problem if the product evolves over time into something else (like Flickr evolved from a very diff product).
Sayam, I’m not saying you should just go out and pick whatever terrible name comes us first. Just that it’s not worth obsessing over to find that one “perfect” choice since there are probably plenty of options that will be good enough.
Jeremy P
on 27 Apr 10This is the kind of self-important Fried-ness (and I know it’s not from Jason today) that gets annoying sometimes. You guys struck gold with Basecamp. That’s undeniable. But don’t act like there wasn’t years of leveraging your online presence and your blog followers before that product launched.
Most Internet marketing does not work that way. You’re essentially saying “Don’t worry about Internet marketing. If you build it, they will come.” That’s just ignorant, and it’s part of the reason why many people like me can’t see past your smugness for the good advice that’s probably in your books and lectures.
We don’t all have thousands of people reading our blogs that we can test market our products to. We live in the real world of build today and launch tomorrow. Making a splash means taking the marketing edge. That means strong branding and a sound product marketing concept.
Johan Strandell
on 27 Apr 10@Chris: See http://37signals.com/33
I agree with Sayam Khan that names can be a turnoff, but I’ve definitely seen people obsess too much about names.
Paul Rand has said “A logo derives its meaning from the quality of the thing it symbolizes, not the other way around” and I think the same is applicable to names: Apple’s iPod/iPad/iPhone names are pretty bad if you think about them, but because the products are excellent the names seems nice as well. This is definitely the case when it comes to band names; “Metallica” is a pretty stupid name for a metal band, and “Beatles” is based on a bad pun, but it seems to have worked out for them anyway.
That said, I definitely dislike names of the self-describing kind, like the ones Sayam lists. :)
Justin Jackson
on 27 Apr 10The guys at Freshbooks say they saw a huge jump in traffic and paying customers when they switched from “Second Site” and bought the freshbooks.com domain.
Their CEO (Mike M) also gave these examples of great company names: 1) PayPal 2) BestBuy 3) Quickbooks
I think you’re underestimating the importance of good name.
Sean McCambridge
on 27 Apr 10If you’re lucky enough to have a 37signals-esque audience, then you don’t need to worry too much about a name (though all of your product names are pretty good). Just pick two good words and put them together, right? I seriously doubt I’ll ever have that audience. I think you’re giving generally good advice but there are other factors like SEO value of your name/domain, memorability, simplicity, etc. Sure, don’t obsess over a name, but please pick the best one you can without stalling your product.
Brian Burridge
on 27 Apr 10I agree you shouldn’t let it became a great source of stress and a stumbling block toward moving on, however, this is one of the few areas in which I’ve always disagreed with 37 signals. I think the importance of the product name cannot be taken lightly. I think that what has happened with 37 signals is that you all are so good at picking names that to you it seems like you don’t put much time and effort into it.
I’ve seen so many business, on and offline come and go, with horrible names that simply does not communicate what they do or what their tone is. You all have done a magnificent job at that. So much so, that maybe you don’t realize just how great an impact it has had on your success.
Denny Deaton
on 27 Apr 10I agree with your post partially. A product name doesn’t have to completely relate to your product or service directly but it does need to have a positive connotation. I am going to guess that most people would not feel comfortable buying from or referring friends to a business called Poop, Inc., even if they sold toilet plungers.
It’s important that the name is easy to remember, easy to say and spell (from memory) and something that positively represents the company.
I don’t really have a problem with 37Signals touting where they have succeeded and sharing that with their followers. The benefits to us all far outweigh the assumed self-admiration. If you don’t like it then don’t read it. As always, thanks for sharing, 37signals.
chriskalani
on 27 Apr 10I totally agree. I’ve lost weeks of work on projects because I was trying to search for that perfect name + domain. It was only until my most recent project that I just started building it without a name. And sure enough, after I actually got off my ass and started doing something a decent name came along. It’s not mind blowing, it wont be muttered in households across america… but it’s something that works.
Hibiscus
on 27 Apr 10I agree – this reminds me of a friend who was involved in three different IT start-ups, none of which ever turned a dime of revenue. In each case, all their time the first month or so was spent working out the company name, logo, corporate colors and getting business cards printed up.
Sören Meyer-Eppler
on 27 Apr 10I disagree. Your (37signals) product names in particular are especially bad. I can never remember what is what and when I try to make a recommendation to somebody they always go huh? The names don’t work for me at all – I have no mental image whatsoever connecting the name with the actual product.
ML
on 27 Apr 101) If you’re lucky enough to have a 37signals-esque audience, then you don’t need to worry too much about a name.
2) Don’t act like there wasn’t years of leveraging your online presence and your blog followers before that product launched.
True, building an audience def helps here. So focus on that. And building something truly useful. There’s no silver bullet to overnight stardom. The perfect name won’t get you there either.
ML
on 27 Apr 10Justin, here’s Freshbooks’ Mike McDerment on the name change:
This does seem an especially bad way to go. So yeah, don’t pick a name that can be spelled 10 diff ways and then put it on a .biz domain.
Daniel
on 27 Apr 10I agree that naming often takes up too much time in exchange for very little effect. I personally like the 37signal product names (and the company name too), and find them pretty memorable, but maybe that’s just me. They could be more descriptive (Highrise in particular is hard to match to its functionality), but they’re just fine as they are.
And speaking of naming products:
I once read that the “iPod” moniker came about because the naming proces dragged on and on until Steve Jobs became irritable and just went with “iPod” to get it over with. And boy did that name catch on regardless.
In and of itself the iPod name is ridiculous. The lowercase “i” comes from the iMac, where it originally stood for “internet” (now it just stands for “oh, an Apple product!”), but the original 2001 iPod itself had nothing to do with the internet. Sure, you could get music from the internet, but not in a legal way. There was no iTMS back then, and the services that did exist all used DRM protected formats, which the iPod couldn’t play.
And “pod”? Not a literal description of the device in any way.
Nevertheless, the name not only caught on, but it became synonymous with “mp3 player”. I can’t even remember the last time I heard someone say “mp3 player”. Most people just say “iPod” even if they’re referring to a non-Apple device.
“iPhone” was a no-brainer at after the iPod, and is darned descriptive, even if it only covers one feature of the device. “iPad” too is descriptive of the product, but the name of course triggered lots of jokes about feminine hygiene products. Doesn’t seem to have hurt sales though!
Granted, Apple has the marketing clout to make almost any product successful no matter what it’s called, but they didn’t have quite that reach when they named the iPod in 2001. Still, it worked, because it was a really nice gadget.
So I agree that naming products shouldn’t be “Your Biggest Concern Ever”. As long as you stay clear of the really stupid names, you’re probably ok. To quote Calvin & Hobbes:
I’d say they’re both right.
Kadir
on 27 Apr 10“And what about picking a name that’s available as a domain? HighriseHQ.com and Backpackit.com have worked fine for us. Search is the way most people wind up finding us anyhow.”
So, if most people come from search, how do they find you when they don’t know the name of the product?
ML
on 27 Apr 10Kadir, I’m not saying that people don’t need to know the name of your product. Just that it doesn’t have to be one that has an available XYZ.com domain name. These days, that’s just too limiting.
Me.
on 27 Apr 10I have also come to admire ya’ll’s patience with some seriously cruel comments out here.
Chad
on 27 Apr 10I definitely agree you shouldn’t get caught up on the URL, as there are endless ways of getting a good url to relate well to your biz or product.
However, I do think a good amount of thought should be put in to the name of a product or biz. It should mean something to you, be catchy, and relate to the customer base somehow. Besides that, pick a name and move on!
Stan Hansen
on 27 Apr 10If it is so unimportant, why not crowdsource your next product name on this blog? Winner gets picked by your readers, you have no input, maybe other than weeding out the awful… even that should be taken care of by your intellegent reader base right? If unimportant then let us pick it.
Dan Boland
on 27 Apr 10Product names only matter when they’re bad. Case in point, eBay’s would-be Craigslist killer, which they named Kijiji. What the hell were they thinking?
They called it “GroupHub” or “ProjectPath” because that was their project URL.
One of my coworkers still calls it “ProjectPath” from a project we did a few years ago with a company who used Basecamp.
Chris
on 27 Apr 10A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow.
Tathagata
on 27 Apr 10You have to know, what all makes a good name, and what makes a bad one. If you don’t know this, you will likely be wasting you time stumbling though a lot of names without a clue. Some people have an inherent ability to pick good names, some don’t. A little self-introspection tell you if you are good at coming up with names (can you quickly make up a few verbs that are not in the dictionary?). And of course, obsessing over a name is definitely a waste of time if you can’t tell a good one from a bad.
While there are innumerable things which make up a good name, one thing constant across all good names is that a good name has some sort of a story to tell.
Sean McCambridge
on 27 Apr 10@Stan Hansen: Nice! I like it. Seriously, that’s not just a fun idea, it would invest the readership in paying more attention to the product launch.
BTW, Haystack >>>>> Sortfolio. That name change made me sad. There’s a certain “likeability” about a name. Sure, it doesn’t matter objectively—but would it give you a boost over an identical product? Maybe.
Michael
on 27 Apr 10It’s hilarious how many of you are trying to skew this as bad advice. Just ask yourself how many of you would tell a startup that doesn’t have a product yet that they need to improve their name or do some branding.
Johan Strandell
on 27 Apr 10It’s not that names are unimportant, it’s that it’s possible to find a good enough name pretty fast, and there are more pressing issues. Put another way: if the name of your product is the most important thing you’re discussing, you’re either deluded or have a pointless product.
I doubt that telephone companies would have fared better if they had used names such as nPhone, msPhone or sePhone instead of their usual names like N90 or W670i. (The recent trend of using actual names for phone models notwithstanding; I think that’s probably a case of cargo cult imitiation.)
Salon has an article about naming companies, from 1999: The name game
Jon Dale
on 28 Apr 10I am totally on board here.
Build a great product / service, and yes, spend a little time picking a name, but the success of your product / service does not hinge on the name itself, but how good your offering is.
I would say the same for tag lines and other marketing jargon.
When Apple first announced the iPad…. there were many opinions on how ridiculous the name was…. but now the device is in people’s hands, suddenly the fact that it’s called an iPad is not an issue — it’s how revolutionary it is.
David O.
on 28 Apr 10“if the name of your product is the most important thing you’re discussing, you’re either deluded or have a pointless product.”
Exactly my thought, finding a product name is perhaps the easiest thing in product development if you know what you’re doing. This is what I follow:
a.) it should be easy to remember
b.) it should be different from the competition
c.) it should relate to your product directly or indirectly.
Examples :
Microsoft: it’s made up word, but it sounds like software.
Apple: Apple as a product name is ambiguous yet it has a good connotation in culture. Personal computers at the time were ambiguous but people were excited about it’s potential for good/productive work.
migraineheadache
on 28 Apr 10I think this is a very good point. It makes me wonder if working in advertising/new media helps make this a stumbling block, as what is necessary for sites that are part of of tv+print campaigns doesn’t work for smaller projects.
Russell Quinn
on 28 Apr 10I guess this philosophy is the reason you guys didn’t check out the legal status of Haystack?
Alberto
on 28 Apr 10Well, Google would have much more success with its smart phone if had other different name; nexus one is an stupid name; much better would be just a one word name like gPhone or so
Adim
on 28 Apr 10I really disagree with this statement. I see where your going about not wasting time or being nit picky with the name of your product but the name of a product is a very important aspect of the marketing and it significantly affects the initial reception of the product.
Apple has gotten great marketing because of the names they have chosen for their products. A good example is the iphone and the phone martket. before the iphone many cellphones had lame names. e.g Nokia 9300 (What does that mean?) how can you market such a phone to a mainstream customer and create an iphone like buzz?, the last phone to cause a frenzie before the iphone was the Motorolla Razr and you can see the name matching the product, people can relate to it and it is highly marketable. I assure you if you name you next product some cryptic convoluted name, unless this product excretes gold it will not do great with marketing.
Something important that might be on the side of 37 signals (even though i feel ur names are a bad example for this argument) is that you serve companies, you serve people who need software to get their stuff done and don’t care if it is cool, or if it is free or what color you banner is, customer facing companies (companies that serve highschool kids to grandmas) like facebook to do not share the same kind of luxuries you guys have ad names of their products better make sense.
Markus
on 28 Apr 10Sometimes I am in awe about how great an establish name sounds, the catch it has and the vibe it transports. But when I finally read how companies like Apple got their name, I realize its not the name, its the company and the emotions connected to it that makes it resonate in our minds.
Peter Marne
on 28 Apr 10Let me suggest how you might have written this:
“If you’re like us at 37signals (and possess the ability to design and build extraordinary products), you can get away with nonmatching URLs for your products and seemingly arbitrary names. Our experience proves it!”
“If you’re like everyone else (i.e. you sell more typical products and services), you really really need to pay attention to product names, URLs, spellings, etc. Because people may go out of their way to find the product that their friends absolutely rave about, but other products and services need catchy, easy to spell, URL-matched names. Everyone else’s experience proves that!”
Asaf Sagi
on 29 Apr 10I agree there should be priorities – and that you first have to build something great and then name it. Exterior aesthetics before core functionality is wrong.
However, a good name could serve you right for a long time. If you find yourself against the wall, just call it “Project something” and rename it upon launching. By then you will have a stronger visual in mind and a richer vocabulary in your field.
Another issue is non-English speaking countries. If you want to have a good name, it should be easy to spell in English (like for a domain name). If you’re targeting several markets of different geographies, then a name easily pronounced in the common languages.
Benjamin Jackson
on 29 Apr 10I knew a guy named Jakov Jerkofski who would disagree with you.
I imagine that you probably exaggerated on the title for effect and don’t really believe that naming has no importance, but I think you’re doing a disservice to the community by downplaying the importance of naming (and by extension, branding) in a product’s success.
It’s obvious (I guess not to some people, but to me) that you need a working product that people want to use. But naming doesn’t have to take away from the time spent on making something that works. If you don’t have the experience to do it well, save up enough money to hire someone who does and spend your time making the product.
Rebranding is hard, and renaming is much harder. If you’re going to carry something around for the rest of the life of your product, it should be helping your business, not hurting it.
Greg Laws
on 30 Apr 10I found Basecamp, along with numerous other products, by searching for online project management. What sealed the deal was 37signals’ simple approach, and backing that up with everything they share on SvN. I would have signed up for Basecamp no matter what it was called.
Don’t get me wrong, I do think a product’s name is important, but it is by far not the most important thing. Make your choice, make it a meaningful name, and move on. Creating a simple, useful product that your users love is way more important.
Alberto
on 30 Apr 10The name is very important for a brand. Hollywood knows it for years. Norma Jeane Mortenson is prettier with the name of Marilyn Monroe. To choose a good name is very important for the value of a brand.
Henk
on 02 May 10A prodoct name is really important. Not only does it have to say what the product is or does, but it is best that the name is easy to remember. I like product names with aliteration like Coca Cola, Black Berry…
Henk Inkt knal
Johan Strandell
on 03 May 1052 weeks of UX: Experience precedes branding
This discussion is closed.