While naming your product look for the traits that saturate your competitive space more than others.

6 months ago | From uxdesign | Author: Brooke Kao

It’s easy to come up with a hundred names for your product, but how do you pick the right one? Most naming guides attribute the decision making process to instinct or a loose framework. However a key component tends to be missing from the process — user or customer validation.

While there’s no silver bullet, this is a process my team and I tried and liked. This is a breakdown of how to pick a name that aligns with your brand values and how your users think.

Wait, what do you mean “easy to come up with a hundred names”?
Names can be broken down into different categories. To start, I would follow a naming guide and generate 10–20 names in each category that align with what you want your users to do, think and feel with your product.

At this point, reflect individually or with your team. Most likely, you’ll be able to vote on and surface 5–10 names that resonate internally. Perhaps you’ve done a competitive analysis and noticed that most companies in your domain use arbitrary trademarks. Or perhaps most of these names sound too much like “penis” (don’t pretend that’s never happened).
With these 5–10, non-vulgar-sounding names, it’s time to visit your company’s brand traits.
Look to others to define yourself
I find it helpful to define your brand’s traits through 5–10 key words. These key words should describe how you’d like your audience to perceive your company, and they shouldn’t be inherently good or evil.

There are certainly imperfections to this process. A survey with a relatively small sample size is not scientifically accurate. I see this as a way to help prevent indecision and back-and-forth, as well as clarify which names are and aren’t probably a good idea. If this post speaks to you, try it out and let me know how it goes.

Continue reading on uxdesign

What your peers are reading!

When a company understands its users as well as purple does, it feels like they have earned our trust

Added 6 months ago | As appeared first on Prototypr | Author: Justin Ramedia

Not long ago, I was trying to watch a video on YouTube. I got the expected “5-second till skipping” countdown and had my mouse hovering over the skip link, but the video was interesting. I laughed, so I figured I’d give it another few seconds to see what the product was all about. I ended up watc... ...Read more

Companies looking to build consumer habits should know that monetization is a result of engagement .

Added 6 months ago | As appeared first on Medium | Author: Nir Eyal

According to the New York Times, when Page looks at a potential company to acquire, he wants to know if the product is, like a toothbrush, “something you will use once or twice a day.” Page clearly understands habits. As I wrote in my book, “Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products,” frequent... ...Read more

When a startup company is visualizing their product, they tend to forget the moments a user has to wait.

Added 6 months ago | As appeared first on Hackernoon | Author: Wayne Chang

Contrary to MVPs, where the goal is to get something barely usable out the door and into the market for initial feedback, an MLP takes the opposite approach, treating, among other things, the first-time experience of a new user very seriously. This is the first time they’ll see your product, the... ...Read more

Working for free is OK in the early days, but later, it gives you an excuse to just “do your best”.

Added 6 months ago | As appeared first on Medium | Author: Jason M. Lemkin

What are the Top 10 things I’d tell myself to do better, if I could go back in time? My top list: Slow down big decisions — when you aren’t sure. You have to move fast and break things, but if the pit in your stomach says “maybe don’t do that” — slow that decision down. My biggest mistakes ha... ...Read more

Launching is hard work, but if hyperlocal marketplaces works in one market, then it will work in hundreds more.

Added 6 months ago | As appeared first on andrewchen | Author: Andrew Chen

How to build a billion dollar digital marketplace – examples from Uber, eBay, Craigslist, and more Marketplaces are easily underestimated When marketplaces get big, they can get really big. Some of the biggest tech successes ever – eBay, Airbnb, Alibaba, Uber – are marketplaces worth ... ...Read more

If you release your product too early, users may write it off as not good enough and getting them back may be difficult.

Added 6 months ago | As appeared first on cbinsights | Author: cbinsights

From lack of product-market fit to disharmony on the team, we break down the top 20 reasons for startup failure by analyzing 101 startup failure post-mortems. WHERE IS THIS DATA COMING FROM? Start your free trial today Email Email SIGN UP After we compiled our list of startup failure post-m... ...Read more