Comments on: Lousy Products Might Break Your Bones – But A Name Will Seldom Hurt You

By: At NeXT, Steve Jobs Balanced Reality Distortion With Startup Realities

At NeXT, Steve Jobs Balanced Reality Distortion With Startup Realities — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 16:01:14 +0000

[...] I note in Lousy Startup Names, in their early days, startups should obsess on developing their value proposition and avoid paying [...]

By: John Greathouse

John Greathouse — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 18:07:00 +0000

Wow, as in “Die in a fire?” Nice.

By: David Melin

David Melin — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 06:25:00 +0000

Just some entertainment.

http://i.imgur.com/VTSRs.jpg

By: Worst Corporate T-shirt Designs Ever

Worst Corporate T-shirt Designs Ever — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 18:17:49 +0000

[...] described in Lousy Product Names, Expertcity was initially a marketplace for services in which users utilized our technology to [...]

By: Henry Martz

Henry Martz — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 17:25:54 +0000

I would suggest a crowdsourcing service as a powerful tool in at least brainstorming some ideas and getting different perspective. You can post a $200 award on Crowdspring.com and the “creatives” will throw out names based on your specifications and info you give about your company. It is standard to get over 80 entries. I believe if you are unhappy with the results the money is refunded as well.

By: Simon Strandgaard

Simon Strandgaard — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 22:35:13 +0000

Google Keyword Tool
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Invaluable when finding good keywords.

There are several problems. Im not a native english speaker, which makes it difficult to pick a good words that expresses the precise meaning. My program isn’t for a specific purpose, so saying that its only for designing logos would be wrong.

My hypothesis is that its much easier to pick a good name when the product is more specialized, such as
http://www.perfecttableplan.com/

A really well-picked name.

By: Harry Tarnoff

Harry Tarnoff — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 21:26:04 +0000

Fantastic summary of what’s really important when it comes to naming companies and products! Thank you, Uncle Saul.

As someone who has named over 100 products, services and entities, I would just like to emphasize the concept of “uniqueness,” not in the spelling as the article discusses, but rather in searchability.

If your product name is “toolbox” or “toolkit,” there are so many search results that your name will be lost in the haystack. However, if you use two words, perhaps combine them, such as with the suggested “designbox,” it will far easily for your product to be distinguished.

I would recommend always doing search engine searches to see what come up for a proposed new name just to see what is the “lay of the land” in which the name will sit, and sometimes you may find someone else has used that name in an unflattering manner that from which you should steer clear.

Best to All

By: Simon Strandgaard

Simon Strandgaard — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 20:50:38 +0000

Elizabeth.. ideas for shorter names for your business. How about: sayhisname.com and sayhersname.com

A really short name that I was suggested was: artlab.com, however that name is already taken and I have mailed them if it was possible to take over the domain, however he said they still are alive. I have looked through zillions of combinations of art and lab, but haven’t yet found the magical name. graphicdesignertoolbox.com is not optimal I know, but it has more meaning than just toolbox.

Thanks for the suggestion.

By: Elizabeth B

Elizabeth B — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 18:24:15 +0000

This is a great read.
I’m looking to change the name of my site because it is just too long for people to remember (www.howtosaythatname.com)
So, Simon — don’t use graphicdesignertoolbox. you’ll end up changing it. All the advice I’ve seen says to stick to 1-2 words, which is definitley true in our case. How about designbox or something similarly short?

By: Simon Strandgaard

Simon Strandgaard — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 22:18:19 +0000

Great read, highly relevant to me. I’m in the process of changing my product name to something more meaningful.

The current product name is “Toolbox”, but the URL: toolboxapp.com is rather bad, because none of my friends can type it in correctly. And the name isn’t something they easily can remember. They always for get the extra “app” when typing in the URL.

The future name im thinking of is “GraphicDesignerToolbox”, which I hope will make more sense to potential buyers and the url is the same as the product name.

Many good pointers in your article.