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The agonies of picking a product name and how we chose Trello

blog.fogcreek.com

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Re: The agonies of picking a product name and how we chose Trello

#21

Post by pitdesi »

One thing we learned is picking a good name is something you should do from the start. We spent considerable time and energy replacing our earlier terrible name (TransFS) with one we like (FeeFighters). The process was pretty similar to Fog Creek's... we went through a huge exercise, met with branding firms, etc. At the end of the day it was an 12th hour "we need something" decision and now we love it. Who knows, we might have loved bidsquid and costhammer just as much...

More on that in this Mixergy interview: http://mixergy.com/sean-harper-feefighters-intervie/

Re: The agonies of picking a product name and how we chose Trello

#22

Post by buzzcut »

ubi wrote: post #19

Another interesting part of the project name / url debate: Is having [product].com that important? In their book and blog 37Signals has generally played down the importance of urls. Pointing to the use of basecamphq.com for their project management offering. I must say I am on the fence. Clearly appending something to your product's name opens more options for un-squatted domains but at what cost to the end user?

I'd love to hear what people think about this. I think a .com name is important, but I can't back that up with any real evidence. And basecamp is a great example of it not mattering.

We considered trelloapp.com (and use trelloapp on Twitter), and my guess is that it all would have turned out fine either way. But I still have a possibly irrational attachment to the [name].com

Re: The agonies of picking a product name and how we chose Trello

#23

Post by rdl »

Is it trello like hello, or trello like llello (yeyo)?

I dislike names which 1) can't be said and transcribed unambiguously over a 4kbps bad cellphone call by a non-native speaker to a non-native speaker and 2) don't have an unambiguous pronunciation...people might not mention your product if they're afraid of sounding stupid mispronouncing "ver-say-che", etc.

Re: The agonies of picking a product name and how we chose Trello

#24

Post by raminf »

buzzcut wrote: post #22
ubi wrote: post #19

Another interesting part of the project name / url debate: Is having [product].com that important? In their book and blog 37Signals has generally played down the importance of urls. Pointing to the use of basecamphq.com for their project management offering. I must say I am on the fence. Clearly appending something to your product's name opens more options for un-squatted domains but at what cost to the end user?

I'd love to hear what people think about this. I think a .com name is important, but I can't back that up with any real evidence. And basecamp is a great example of it not mattering. We considered trelloapp.com (and use trelloapp on Twitter), and my guess is that it all would have turned out fine either way. But I still have a possibly irrational attachment to the [name].com

Completely agree with the "giant time-slurping vortex" part :-)

In the mobile world the {product}app.com convention is pretty prevalent and has opened up some choices. You could always start a new convention for web-based products.

I personally don't think a single product needs to have its own unique domain. Most browsers nowadays have the combo URL/search field feature (or the search field is right next to the URL). Someone typing in the product name will likely find it one way or another.

Re: The agonies of picking a product name and how we chose Trello

#25

Post by mootothemax »

One aspect I'm interested in is the SEO angle. For instance, if I make cow food and call myself Cow Food Online, register a domain of cowfoodonline.com, would I stand to benefit from having lots of links with "Cow Food Online" pointing at my domain, since that'd be the name of my service?

Re: The agonies of picking a product name and how we chose Trello

#29

Post by polshaw »

rdl wrote: post #23

Is it trello like hello, or trello like llello (yeyo)? I dislike names which 1) can't be said and transcribed unambiguously over a 4kbps bad cellphone call by a non-native speaker to a non-native speaker and 2) don't have an unambiguous pronunciation...people might not mention your product if they're afraid of sounding stupid mispronouncing "ver-say-che", etc.

I'm going to assume trello, like trellis!

I agree with your points but think trello is fairly unambiguous, considering it was an available (? or cheap) 6 letter .com domain.

Re: The agonies of picking a product name and how we chose Trello

#30

Post by prpon »

mootothemax wrote: post #25

One aspect I'm interested in is the SEO angle. For instance, if I make cow food and call myself Cow Food Online, register a domain of cowfoodonline.com, would I stand to benefit from having lots of links with "Cow Food Online" pointing at my domain, since that'd be the name of my service?

I ain't no SEO expert but patio11 who is an expert mentioned it as the reason for picking 'appointmentreminder.org' for his project.
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