A little over a year ago, I blogged about the trend of tech companies using goofy names for their applications. I specifically looked at the mobile-related industry. Looking at five apps with names that kind of make sense, and five with what I would call "made up" names, I recorded their unique visitors for that particular month (Nov '07). As promised, I am going to compare the numbers at that point in time to where things are now *.
Yes, I understand there is more to the success of a web application than its name alone. This is just an experiment. :-)
Okay, here are the "normal" names and November '07 & December '08 unique monthly visitors:
- SignalMap (signalmap.com)
Nov '07: 2698
Dec '08: 7858
+ 191% - MindJot (mindjot.com)
Nov '07: 546
Dec '08: N/A (that's not good!)
- 100% - Smart2Go (smart2go.com)
Nov '07: 2021
Dec '08: 150
- 93% - BuddyPing (buddyping.com)
Nov '07: 596
Dec '08: 1051
+ 76% - CallWave (callwave.com)
Nov '07: 2,033,668
Dec '08: 350,714
- 82% - Average % change overall: -1.6%
So far nobody looks like they are doing very well with the exception of SignalMap. Now for the "madeup" names:
- Jaduka (jaduka.com)
Nov '07: 4152
Dec '08: 13,657
+ 229% - Zedmo (zedmo.com)
Nov '07: 4056
Dec '08: 373
- 91% - Joopz (joopz.com)
Nov '07: 4274
Dec '08: 3473
- 19% - Foonz (foonz.com)
Nov '07: 2706
Dec '08: 1453
- 46% - Zannel (zannel.com)
Nov '07: 21,867
Dec '08: 27,695
+ 27% - Average % change overall: +20%
In each category, only two apps actually increased their traffic, and in the case of Jaduka, it was enough of an increase to carry the "madeup" category into a +20% overall increase versus the 1.6% decrease for the "normals." Only four of the apps overall increased their monthly visitors, perhaps a sign of the economy. Who knows if the "madeups" would have performed better than they did if they had used more descriptive names for their apps, but in a random sampling they appear to have performed better than their "normal" counterparts.
Nothing too deeply scientific about this experiment, but interesting!
* All statistics obtained from Compete.com
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2 comments:
Thanks for sharing the stats Dave.
2008 was a good year for us at Jaduka. We worked really hard with our customers & partners to build a variety of very successful & innovative products using our Voice & Transaction Services APIs.
We are looking forward to continuing our success in 2009 as we will continue to develop frictionless solutions that help businesses lower their communication costs & improve their business processes.
I invite you & all of your blog readers to visit http://labs.jaduka.com to learn more about the types of products our technology enables & for all of you to try them out for yourself for free.
Thanks,
Brian Kirk
NetworkIP & Jaduka
Thanks for the comments, Brian. Jaduka has a great assortment of apps, and I may hook dukaBUZZ in the near future. As the top performer in the Lift Development "name" experiment, maybe I'll profile all of Jaduka's offerings in a future post.
~Dave
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