Your app or game name is one of the most difficult, but also most important, decisions you will make. How should you approach this? In this post by Stuart Hall from Appbot, Stuart shares his thoughts using analysis of over 8,000 apps.
Back in the middle of 2014 I looked into what made a successful App Store name. 18 months is a long time on the App Store so I thought it was time to follow up, see what’s changed and have a more in-depth look.
The Stats
I analyzed 8000 apps in the US App Store top charts.
| Word Count | Character Count | |
| Max | 38 | 254 |
| Min | 1 | 2 |
| Avg | 5.5 | 36.0 |
| Median | 4 | 27 |
The results varied greatly.
From names with 1 word and 2 letters like “QQ” to the crazy with 38 words and 254 characters – “Voice Translator with speech recognition – Does translate understand and speak 29 languages like Spanish English Russian French Czech or German – Dictate and hear the app read its translation to study or exchange with foreign speakers like an interpreter”
Word Count
Looking at the distribution of the number of words used.
Most apps clustered towards using less words. With 2 & 3 words being the most popular.
Over 50% of apps use 4 words or less.
Character Count
Similarly looking at the distribution of the number of characters used.
Peaking 12 characters, the majority of apps use less than 30 characters in their app name.
Common Words
The top 10 words used were:
| WORD | COUNT |
|---|---|
| and | 1291 |
| for | 1172 |
| free | 638 |
| pro | 485 |
| the | 472 |
| with | 355 |
| to | 341 |
| your | 307 |
| app | 299 |
Ignoring stop words like “and”, “for”, “the” etc gives:
| WORD | COUNT |
|---|---|
| free | 638 |
| pro | 485 |
| tracker | 266 |
| weather | 253 |
| music | 219 |
| photo | 213 |
| video | 203 |
| mobile | 199 |
| news | 189 |
| iphone | 155 |
The top 50 words were:
“free, pro, tracker, weather, music, photo, video, mobile, news, iphone, calculator, gps, guide, manager, player, instagram, editor, best, edition, live, new, map, text, radio, maker, daily, videos, camera, bible, hd, voice, game, photos, get, plus, phone, emoji, maps, scanner, english, dictionary, games, google, keyboard, calendar, baby, sleep, audio, reader, world”
Plotting it on a word cloud:
Separators
Many apps use a separator, e.g. “Flipboard: Your Social News Magazine” and “Pandora – Free Music & Radio“.
So I dug into what is used.
| Has a – separator | 2622 | |
| Has a : separator | 578 | |
32% of apps use – in their app name.
Categories
Almost 20% of apps used the name of the category in their app name.
And when you look at a category like Music 50% of the top 200 apps had music in the name, or Weather where 62% have weather in their name.
It pays to be descriptive and clear.
The Tips
When naming your mobile app think about:
- Choose a name that is 2-6 words long.
- Be descriptive and include your main keyword / category (photo, music, video, news etc)
- Consider using a – to seperate your name and pitch.
- If you have a longer name consider how it will wrap on different devices.
- Call your app “Free Weather Tracker Pro” (just kidding)
Names I Love
This post first appeared on the Appbot Blog, a great resource for those building mobile apps or games. Republished with permission from the Author.
