I am excited to be speaking on Web 2.0 Product Management at the O'Reilly Web 2.0 Expo on Thursday, April 24, 2008, at 1:30 pm. You can learn more about my presentation at the O'Reilly Web 2.0 Expo website. Hope you can make it!
I gave a presentation on product management and viral metrics at Stanford's new Facebook Class on October 25th. Given how recently Facebook opened up its platform to third-party developers, it's great to see a course come together so quickly on that topic. If you are developing applications for Facebook, OpenSocial, or another emerging Web platform, I would recommend taking a look at the information on the Stanford Facebook Class website.
The topic of naming ended up being quite timely; it came up with several clients and colleagues shortly after my previous post. Since then, I discovered The Name Inspector, a website dedicated to naming. They have a great article on name types.
The article describes 10 different categories of names. To tie that article back to my post, the first three name categories (real words, compounds, and phrases) are the ones that I think tend to be the most "word of mouth friendly". Successful examples of these types of names are: MySpace, Facebook, Firefox, Paypal, Salesforce, and SecondLife. YouTube fits as well, although it starts with a homonym, which isn't ideal (I wonder how much free traffic www.utube.com has received).
Certain variants of the "tweaked words" category can also produce "word of mouth friendly" names, especially when the tweak is just adding an "e" to the beginning of a well-known word. eBay and eGreetings are two good examples. Adding an "i" is okay, too, but not always ideal because of the homonym (is it iglasses.com or eyeglasses.com?).
Most of the other name categories do not tend to be conducive to word of mouth, especially the "made up or obscure origin" names (such as meebo and jajah). This category should be avoided if maximizing word of mouth friendliness is an important objective. In some cases, however, using a creative new word might be warranted (e.g., if a brand objective to convey an emotion or an abstract concept is more important). Just recognize that by going that route, it will probably cost more money and/or time to achieve a given level of brand awareness (compared to using a name that is more "word of mouth friendly").
Michael McDerment at Vitamin had a great post with advice on naming your company/website. Having recently gone through the process of naming a new website, I thought his advice was very sound. He suggests some valuable guidelines and a good process for coming up with the name.
Among other things, Michael suggests that the name should be easy to remember and easy to spell. I would go even further and say that your website name should be as "word of mouth friendly" as possible. What do I mean by "word of mouth friendly"? I mean it should be a name that, when told verbally to prospective users, has a very high chance of being typed correctly. Many users attempt to find a site by typing their best guess at the URL directly into the browser. Many users also try to find a site by typing their best guess at the website name into a search engine. Either way, increasing their chance of success will help your business. If your name is "word of mouth friendly", it should not have to be spelled out to prospective users. Therefore, it should contain only words that are familiar to most people and that most people know how to accurately spell. These guidelines would mean limiting the building blocks for your name to words in the dictionary. While there are new brands that come out that are relatively easy to spell without being dictionary words (e.g., Celebrex or Acura), they are typically accompanied by large advertising budgets with print and television ads that help consumers become familiar with the spelling of the name.
You should also avoid words that are homonyms (i.e., sound the same as another word), which require explanation to disambiguate (e.g., is the URL yourethere.com or yourtheir.com?). Similarly, you should try to avoid words that sound the same as a letter of the alphabet (e.g., is the URL ohiseeyou.com or oicu.com?).
There are many Web 2.0 sites with names do not meet the criteria I suggest: meebo, flickr, jajah, and del.icio.us. Perhaps many new web start-ups pick such names because it can be hard to find good "normal" names. On the one hand, I can sympathize because it can often seem like all the good domain names are taken. Plus, there are certainly web start-ups with non-standard names that end up being quite successful. However, I think many web start-ups miss out on some degree of potential growth because their domain name is not "word of mouth friendly".
Most products, websites included, benefit tremendously from word of mouth, where one person verbally tells another about the product. Imagine two websites: website A has a name that 90% of people who hear it can correctly type into a browser, and website B has a name that only 10% of people who hear it can do so. All other things being equal, website A will grow much more quickly than website B. I am not saying that "word of mouth friendliness" trumps all other factors. There may be other factors that cause website B's actual growth rate to be higher than website A's (e.g., it may have a more viral user experience). However, all other things being equal, having a more "word of mouth friendly" name will promote faster growth. Another way to think about quantifying the benefit is to consider the same website under two different naming scenarios. For example, in scenario 1, website B has a very "word of mouth friendly" name and in scenario 2 it has a name that is not very "word of mouth friendly". It is clear that website B's growth rate in scenario 1 will be higher than in scenario 2.
I totally agree with Michael's point that, for a web company or product, you should really own the ".com" of your desired name. Sticking to this objective can become quite frustrating, especially when you've come up with the perfect name only to find out from WhoIs that the .com domain is taken. On that note, I ended up bypassing the step of typing the URL into a browser. Instead, I just started with the WhoIs lookup because too many times, I wouldn't find a live website at the URL but then learn that someone owned the domain name
With the proliferation of domain name "squatters" (and now squatting companies), it's increasingly likely that if there is not a real website at the desired domain name that you might be able to purchase the domain name. If you find yourself questioning whether or not the domain name is worth the asking price, definitely keep trying to come up with names. It may seem like all the good names are taken, but I've found that with creativity and persistence you can usually come up with a good website name that is available.
Today I helped a friend with search engine optimization (SEO) of his website. I recently read a good book on SEO, "Search Engine Optimization, An Hour A Day" and was applying some of the principles from it. I ended up using several useful tools that I wanted to share.
First off, a tool that estimates search term popularity is essential. Wordtracker is highly rated in the book, but it isn't free (although they have a free 2-hour trial). So I tried using Yahoo's tool which is supposed to be at this URL http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion but the page wouldn't come up (it looks like they may have recently implemented a UI redesign and changed some URL schemes). I used Google's tool instead and it provided basic information (useful, but not quantitative). However, for some reason, it wouldn't return results for some phrases I tried that contained quotes (e.g., "san francisco" wedding services).
The second tool I found at http://tool.motoricerca.info/keyword-density.phtml analyzes the keyword density of a live web page (you just give it the URL). It has several useful option settings. In addition to showing you the count and density for each individual word, it also shows you the counts and densities for two-word and three-word phrases.
The third tool, also mentioned in the book, at http://www.live-keyword-analysis.com/ also calculates a keyword density, but, instead of entering a URL, you copy the text into a form. This would be handy if you were editing copy to increase a keyword's density and you wanted to see the effects of your edits.
I hope you find these tools useful if you're working on SEO.
Welcome to the new Olsen Solutions Blog, where I will be sharing my thoughts on product management, user interface design, and product development. I plan to cover both the theory and the application of product management concepts, using real world examples where I can. My goal is to create a forum where the best ideas in product management are described, discussed, and, hopefully, improved.
