Not a long post today.
I was pretty sick yesterday, but finally able to get up and move around today. Yes, that's right after last week's breaking of my left wrist.
Ton's of fun over here at the Lema house.
Which question should you answer
What I notice in the world I spend a lot of time in, the WordPress world, is that most product naming is descriptive.
If you build an eCommerce solution:
- WooCommerce
- Easy Digital Downloads
- WP eCommerce
If you build a forms solution:
- Gravity Forms
- Ninja Forms
- Formidable Pro
Now, to be clear, there's nothing about descriptive naming that is wrong. I'm not trying to say that.
But it feels like a decision made by engineers. They looked at their products and said, “what does it do?”
And I guess my real question here is simply, is that the right question?
A shift in focus
I think the product naming approach is a function of the maturity in the WordPress community. While it was young, the product naming focused on being descriptive because it was the easiest way to tell someone what you did.
More importantly, there wasn't a lot of competition. Years ago, there was only 1 form builder and 1 eCommerce solution (Gravity Forms, WP eCommerce).
Today the maturity of the space has grown. And my sense is that folks stepping into the commercial plugin world might want to consider that.
Instead of answering the question, “What does it do?” developers might want to think about, “What does it do for me?”
[Tweet “Adding “for me” to the “what does it do” question drives you to a product's benefits more than its function.”]
Adding “for me” to the “what does it do” question drives you to a product's benefits more than its function.
That shift in focus could provide a serious benefit in the long run when it comes to marketing the value of your product beyond its features.
After all, they say a rose by any other name smells as sweet, but you wouldn't walk up to a glass case of “red flowers with stems” would you? And you wouldn't pay top dollar for them, right?
I don't know. What do you think? How do you name your product?