Testing your business idea: Phase 1 - Developing a brand name
Response to reader question:
Q: Vjournal is an edgy name, I assume the V is for Vagina. Your department topics are racy. How did you come up with the idea, and what kind of testing did you do before deciding to go this route?
A: I first came up with the idea for an edgy news site for business women about 2 years ago. What made me take the initiative to finally build it out was:
Although investors and advertisers have gone crazy for blog networks, I personally find it hard to believe this will continue as most blog content is "hit and miss" in terms of quality content and a lot of it is just plain bad. Yet the very nature of blogs is that each blogger feels they should have the prerogative to write whatever they want with no editorial review for relevance or quality control for proper grammar. Given my audience is one of the busiest out there and are well-educated and sophisticated, I wanted to ensure my website had consistent, quality content while still giving them a means of contributing.
So I was going to buck the current trend of blog networks and free-form user-generated content (another popular buzz-word that has landed companies millions in financing) and go a more "newsy" direction. People could still submit contributed articles, but they would go through an editorial process. And Vjournal has had its users submit good content, like the post from Wendy Bohling, a great girl-geek, and Michelle Calloway, who felt compelled to write her article because of current politics. I've rejected several because they were either off-topic, very poor writing, or barely disguised press releases, so I feel l made the right decision on requiring editorial review. (Note for contributed content that isn't perfect but is a great topic, we do edit the material and get the author's approval on our edits before posting.)
Now understand I've already had some startup successes enough to finance this on my own, so I'm following my gut in my willingness to buck the trend. I believe strongly that my busy audience won't spend much time with the content if it is simply user-generated in an un-fettered way. This is very much a bias and may very well make my project less attractive to trend-following investors. This is a risk I am willing to take as I believe in putting my audience ahead of anything else - which in the long-run should attract high-quality subscribers and advertisers.
Did I test the name and double-entendres - YOU BET. When I envisioned my website, I did think "edgy" but had HUGE questions with how it would play - so testing acceptance of the tone was critical. This post is getting long so I'll break up the steps I took into the following:
Phase 1: Developing a brand name
My area of expertise is branding, so coming up with a name had to meet my (admitted) biases and goals in brand name selection for this project:
1) Brand name is easily pronounced
2) When someone merely hears the name, they can guess fairly accurately on the spelling
3) No more than 3 syllables
4) Reasonable .com domain name is available
5) The name relates to women personally
6) After hearing the name, could they remember it even 10 minutes later. Why 10 minutes? How many of you get introduced to a person and even just after hearing the name, realize you don't remember it? Ten minutes is a decent predictor of whether the name has hit your short-term memory. Generally if you can remember it 10 minutes later you can remember it a few hours later - so long enough for you to hear it from a friend at lunch and check it out when you got back to your computer if you were so inclined. At the very least, if you heard or saw it again you'd be more likely to remember that you've heard it before, creating a reinforcement effect on the brand.
I thought of at least 200 names and looked up the availability of hundreds more domain names. I came up with both edgy and safe names. Vjournal.com wasn't even available - it was clearly owned by a domain squatter who mentioned on the site that it may be available for sale, but he could have wanted thousands for it.
I narrowed my list to 22 names and started asking friends by showing them the list and asking them to pick their top 5. (Note I am enough of a research geek that the lists weren't all identical - I'd move the names around so names at the bottom of the list still got a decent shot at being selected.) I listed Vjournal since I knew I could get my hands on it at some still-unknown price, and when it came out the winner I made a low-ball offer which was accepted (likely because they were well aware of their Google problems so the site was less attractive to them). So for the name I wanted, I got lucky - but I had bought a half-dozen back-up names as well.
Next, I did some "sorta formal" focus groups. I created a Power Point mock-up of the homepage with 3 versions to test the brand name and the department names to get an early gauge on going more edgy.
This will be covered in a separate post.
Have a question? Ask it at natalee roan [at] yahoo.
Q: Vjournal is an edgy name, I assume the V is for Vagina. Your department topics are racy. How did you come up with the idea, and what kind of testing did you do before deciding to go this route?
A: I first came up with the idea for an edgy news site for business women about 2 years ago. What made me take the initiative to finally build it out was:
- A car accident that forced me to leave my job but gave my restless 'startup junkie' mind too much time to think while I was recuperating;
- The #1 post on this blog was one called Female Bosses - your opinion? I had more than 20,000 people show interest in that one entry- and they would have been disappointed because there wasn't any real content - I was truly looking for visitor's opinions. But the reaction told me there was something to this subject as the next ranking entry was more than 30% lower.
- I began getting many emails from female professionals, and the questions made me realize they didn't feel there was a good source of real, "this is how it is and here's how to deal with it" information. I found it extremely humbling that they were turning to me, and tried my best to answer each personally. But I also couldn't help but take it as a sign that timing might be right for my 2-year old idea. (Note if I didn't have some already built-in audience, the decision would have been much more difficult as building audience is HARD.)
Although investors and advertisers have gone crazy for blog networks, I personally find it hard to believe this will continue as most blog content is "hit and miss" in terms of quality content and a lot of it is just plain bad. Yet the very nature of blogs is that each blogger feels they should have the prerogative to write whatever they want with no editorial review for relevance or quality control for proper grammar. Given my audience is one of the busiest out there and are well-educated and sophisticated, I wanted to ensure my website had consistent, quality content while still giving them a means of contributing.
So I was going to buck the current trend of blog networks and free-form user-generated content (another popular buzz-word that has landed companies millions in financing) and go a more "newsy" direction. People could still submit contributed articles, but they would go through an editorial process. And Vjournal has had its users submit good content, like the post from Wendy Bohling, a great girl-geek, and Michelle Calloway, who felt compelled to write her article because of current politics. I've rejected several because they were either off-topic, very poor writing, or barely disguised press releases, so I feel l made the right decision on requiring editorial review. (Note for contributed content that isn't perfect but is a great topic, we do edit the material and get the author's approval on our edits before posting.)
Now understand I've already had some startup successes enough to finance this on my own, so I'm following my gut in my willingness to buck the trend. I believe strongly that my busy audience won't spend much time with the content if it is simply user-generated in an un-fettered way. This is very much a bias and may very well make my project less attractive to trend-following investors. This is a risk I am willing to take as I believe in putting my audience ahead of anything else - which in the long-run should attract high-quality subscribers and advertisers.
Did I test the name and double-entendres - YOU BET. When I envisioned my website, I did think "edgy" but had HUGE questions with how it would play - so testing acceptance of the tone was critical. This post is getting long so I'll break up the steps I took into the following:
- Phase 1 was coming up with the brand name.
- Phase 2 was testing the edginess on focus groups.
- Phase 3 was “real world” testing, which would require a live website.
Phase 1: Developing a brand name
My area of expertise is branding, so coming up with a name had to meet my (admitted) biases and goals in brand name selection for this project:
1) Brand name is easily pronounced
2) When someone merely hears the name, they can guess fairly accurately on the spelling
3) No more than 3 syllables
4) Reasonable .com domain name is available
5) The name relates to women personally
6) After hearing the name, could they remember it even 10 minutes later. Why 10 minutes? How many of you get introduced to a person and even just after hearing the name, realize you don't remember it? Ten minutes is a decent predictor of whether the name has hit your short-term memory. Generally if you can remember it 10 minutes later you can remember it a few hours later - so long enough for you to hear it from a friend at lunch and check it out when you got back to your computer if you were so inclined. At the very least, if you heard or saw it again you'd be more likely to remember that you've heard it before, creating a reinforcement effect on the brand.
I thought of at least 200 names and looked up the availability of hundreds more domain names. I came up with both edgy and safe names. Vjournal.com wasn't even available - it was clearly owned by a domain squatter who mentioned on the site that it may be available for sale, but he could have wanted thousands for it.
I narrowed my list to 22 names and started asking friends by showing them the list and asking them to pick their top 5. (Note I am enough of a research geek that the lists weren't all identical - I'd move the names around so names at the bottom of the list still got a decent shot at being selected.) I listed Vjournal since I knew I could get my hands on it at some still-unknown price, and when it came out the winner I made a low-ball offer which was accepted (likely because they were well aware of their Google problems so the site was less attractive to them). So for the name I wanted, I got lucky - but I had bought a half-dozen back-up names as well.
Next, I did some "sorta formal" focus groups. I created a Power Point mock-up of the homepage with 3 versions to test the brand name and the department names to get an early gauge on going more edgy.
This will be covered in a separate post.
Have a question? Ask it at natalee roan [at] yahoo.
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