It’s likely to be the first thing you do. Or, in my experience, it might be the last thing you do, when you discover your excellent name is thrown out by the lawyers because a Bluegrass band has lay claim to it. And you’re offering couldn’t be more different to theirs. Here are five quick steps to making sure the name of your app works for you:
- Carry out searches – don’t just Google your app name to check which other brands are using your nuanced nomenclature, I strongly recommend a quick search on the Intellectual Property Office website.
- Make it clear – Is the name clear and does it tell you what your app does? An important benefit of clear, understandable names will be search engine and app store visibility. We hope that with ‘QuizTrail’ we achieved that. It’s a trail you follow where you answer questions, just in case! Our original name for ‘QuizTrail’ was ‘InQuizitor’, but shortly after we pitched the idea, the domain name was snapped up by a GCSE revision guide series. Perhaps a side point under this heading should be pronounceability. Your users won’t thank you if they can’t say the name of your app.
- Be authentic – as tempting as it is to use elements of successful apps in your app name, it’s generally much better to come up with your own name i.e Facepages and Angry Nuns are out.
- Keep it short – being concise has several benefits. Chief amongst them is visibility in your selected app store and the ability to fit your name under the app icon. The label under the icon can only be eleven characters long.
- Take your time and test – you’ve invested money; more importantly, you’ve invested time. The name of the app is the key to helping you stand out in the crowd of the literally millions of other apps.
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