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The big naming issue.. a.k.a mv “GottaGo.app” “Transport.app” ?

Well, maybe the most of those who read my blog on a regular basis know the problem with “GottaGo” already.

One week after I released “GottaGo” (release in the sense of ‘appeared in the App Store’), another company called “WindyStudious” released an app with the same name. No big deal - I thought. Pretty stupid, but no big deal.
Problems started later. First of all, it became confusing for my users. Some (I only know 2 who told me) bought the app from “WindyStudios” cause they thought it’s my GottaGo.. So this is not so funny.

Ok, 3 weeks ago, I got a mail from Apple, informing me, that I should update my app because it features non-functional standard iPhone interfaces - the phone interface. Uhm, well yeah, so I searched through my app to find anything resembling the phone interface - no I didn’t, I knew it :)

Long story short: they were talking about the other GottaGo. Great Job! If even Apple is confused, how should customers feel?

Then I wanted to update the information about GottaGo - did not work because there was another app with the same name. So when I sent the form with the new information, it checked if that name existed already - so it did. How friggin stupid is this?
It gets even better: 3 e-mails to Apple - no response.
Alright, so what are we gonna do about it? Renaming.

Of course, geeks like the name. It’s not something like “Maps” or “Calendar” - it’s the philosophy of the app “GottaGo”.
But I noticed some comments in the SBB-Fahrplan app, from people telling that they were waiting for a mobile timetable app for the iPhone. Well - GottaGo was out there 2 weeks before.
Now with that issues with Apple and the “not so obvious name” issue in my neck, I started to think about a new name.
For now, I changed it to “GottaGo!” (which seemed to get around the duplicate name issue) - But that’s not the end of the game, I guess.

What is the real problem with an easy name? I think, that people on the App Store don’t have a subtitle or an abstract of an App when they browse through the Apps. Just a name. So your name must be informative and eyecatching. “GottaGo” is eyecatching only with a philosophy information - which, I think, only 2% care about.
Compare this to desktop software: You can release it under any name, as long as the information is right and Google finds it, as soon as you got the geeks on your side, you’re set.. Not so on the iPhone. Actually, quite a bunch of people using the iPhone are a) not even using the AppStore or b) only downloading games - most of them are non-geeks.

So what we “useful application developers” are trying to do is getting the attention of those who occasionally browse through the apps, and don’t care much about what’s behind an app.
The others, who download your stuff anyway are the “geeks” (not all of them are real geeks, though). They download everything that is free - or they read information or they search for something they want. So, with a good information and a good app, you’ll get them anyway. (the quality maters effect)
But those who browse occasionally through the App Store are the most fascinating. Not only do you have to deal with getting their attention. Your App is your only way to talk to them. They won’t follow the comments of your app, they won’t read your blog, they won’t write you an e-mail, they won’t file a bug - they write a comment, that’s it. Sometimes, they don’t even update your app for weeks.. If you’re lucky and they wrote a comment with a complaint you understand (which is about 30% of all complaints) you’re even in a worse situation that you can’t response to them. You don’t get the e-mail addresses of those anywhere, and there is no reply-to-this-comment method - which is very sad.

But we’ll discuss this later on, as soon as we see what happens with GottaGo and a much improved version. I’m very curious about the change in the numbers of API-calls from the new and the old version. I’ll keep you posted :)
Back to the name. There is another issue with the name now - publicity. I had that interview with Blick am Abend and so users know the name “GottaGo” now - changing the name now would be very confusing. But nevertheless, what to do?

On one side, there is that bunch of people who don’t use GottaGo because they don’t know what it is because they only read the name and nobody recommended it to them. On the other side, there is that bunch of people who are waiting on the new release of “GottaGo” and might get confused by a change of the name.
I’m actually thinking about changing it to “Transport” (because it’s more or less language neutral, eyecatching and informative) - “Transit” was also for discussion, but “Transport” sounds better.

I’m asking for your input. What do you think - should GottaGo be renamed to “Transport” or not?

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Filed under: GottaGo, Information, iPhone on September 18, 2008 at 5:59 pm by marc.
Tags: advice, fahrplan, GottaGo, iPhone, sbb