@wcoolsDay 5, and time for a bit more brainstorming about the roadmap and the idea. One of the things on the agenda: naming the app. We’ve picked Thymer.
Picking a name can be difficult but we don’t really have too many magic tips here, it’s a mix of inspiration and luck a name you like is not taken by something similar. Some considerations:
- We usually try not to go with something too generic like say apple, although that seems to have worked out OK for them. It helps of course if it’s easy for people to find you when searching on Google, Twitter, and so on. Likewise it helps if you can find it, so you can see where people are referring to your product.
- We still like .com, keep it simple.
- For a lot of people the browser’s address bar is Google, so they don’t type the full domain but rather the name. That makes it difficult for them to find what they’re looking for when you’re on page 20 in the case of a generic word.
- Not that we always do this right, but it helps if your target audience can pronounce it 😉
- Some top level domains might come across as spammy. Some might be associated very strongly with a different brand already (which can of course help if you create something like a plugin for another product). Some countries also have some requirements your business is from there, or suddenly introduce extra paperwork. Some are really trendy, which can be a good signal to early adopters; you also run the risk that in 5 years from now it sounds very stale though. Some have all of that (startups which used .ly back in the days)
- When in doubt, it seems a trend is to just take two words which form something catchy together. Even if those are generic words, the combined name won’t be generic. SuperList, PhoneMagic, InboxMountain, etc. I think this trend will stick longer than some others (like the early Web2 days names such as Twttr, Flickr) as it’s easy to come up with, pronounceable and there’s a lot of combinations (which helps with most short domains already being taken). Another benefit is people might already get what your product is from the name.
- In our case we liked the idea of something new while trying to refer to the product a bit, something related to productivity (getting more out of your day/managing time).
- In the end, the name is not super important. It won’t make or break your product as long as it’s not completely terrible.
In our case we still had the domain lying around, unused for like 10 years (a story for another time). For now thymer.com simply redirects to this blog, as we don’t have any visitors yet anyway. We’ll start working on a proper landing page some time soon.
