Although it might sound like a small step, naming a product can often be a very tough task in a brand-building process. By creating the product name, you’re also consciously or unconsciously creating the product’s image, price, target audience, associations, and expectations in customers’ minds.

Therefore, using some product naming tips can help you build a brand, position your store on top of the Google search and increase sales.

Table of contents:

• What makes a good product name
• 8 Tactics to create a product name
• Bonus Tips

What makes a good product name?

There are many theories about what a good name should look like, and most of them are partly right and partly wrong if we take them as an exact formula. That’s because creating a good name takes not only a recipe but creativity, courage, risk, and luck. 

Still, marketing and brand experts agree on some common characteristics that should be considered when creating a name. In the following text, we’ll primarily focus on things necessary for dropshipping brands, taking into account lower budgets and high competition. Having all that in mind, a product name should be:

1. Unique above all

Once you’ve found a winning product, you’ve created a great ad, and you’ve targeted the right audience, all that’s left is getting your customers to see the ad and buy it. Unluckily, what almost everyone does after seeing an interesting product is not immediately purchasing it but trying to find the same thing at a lower price.

Since no one sane wants to spend his/her money on advertising the products that will be bought from someone else, being the one who appears on top of the Google search results is crucial for the dropshipping success.

Although descriptive product names are more likely to appear when someone types in a keyword for your product, that doesn’t promise you the top 5 places in the search listing. Instead, it ensures an expensive and exhausting battle with the rest of the stores.

Therefore, save the keywords for headers, descriptions, and tag lines, and choose something unique to reduce competition and expenses.

2. Emotional

Let’s take the example of Nike. Nike is the name of the Greek goddess of victory. Thus Nike communicates the message of winning, achievement, and success. Following the same principle, Hyundai wanted to present themselves as a futuristic company that strives to provide progress for humanity, so they took a name that stands for “modernity” in the Korean language.

3. Thought-provoking

Many good names are playful in a way, so they keep customers’ attention and make them solve a little puzzle when they hear it. They are more catchy, amusing, and easier to remember. Still, a too complicated name can have the opposite effect, causing confusion and making it too difficult to recall.

An example of a thought-provoking name is Wiktionary, a compound noun made of two words: Wikipedia and dictionary. The name origin is pretty evident to everyone, still more catchy and amusing than simply calling it Wikipedia dictionary.

4. Suggestive

5. Relevant

Except you have a considerable budget set aside for brand building, try avoiding meaningless words.

They indeed were good choices for some companies like Kodak or IKEA because completely made-up words with no meaning give the brand the privilege to start with a blank page. With no connotations connected with the name, they had a chance to create a brand image as they wanted it to be.

It’s also a plus for trademarking, but we suggest you stick to the relevant names for dropshipping products because it will cost you less and give faster results.

8 Tactics to create a product name

Let’s now take a look at some of the techniques to come up with a great name. We’ve chosen to present the ones suitable for dropshipping businesses – methods that help you create a unique but still meaningful name. You can use just one or combine more of them, and it’s totally up to you – it’s brainstorming time!

1. Blended names

Some of the companies that used blanded words for their names are Microsoft – as the company devoted to microcomputer software, or Pinterest  – combining the words “pin” and “interest.” They could have called their company “pin your interest” as well, but blended names are commonly used because they are more catchy, original, exciting, and easier to remember.

2. Metaphorical names

Metaphorical names use actual words that serve as a metaphor for their brand or product. This method is attractive because symbolic names already have their meaning in language.

“Dove” cosmetics chose this word for their brand because it represents something white, pure, and innocent and symbolizes love and peace. Jeff Bezos named his company “Amazon” after the world’s most voluminous river, indicating the potential for a larger volume of sales in an online bookstore.

3. Misspelling or twisted names

Get creative and spice it up a bit by using a common word that represents your product or brand but with twisted writing. It’s interesting and original, easier to remember than the word of origin, and practical for Google ranking.

That’s how Lyft got its name as well as Reddit, Fiverr, and Vimeo.

4. Translated names

Look for the name inspiration in other languages as well. In the Latin language, “Volvo” means “I roll,” while the “Lego” name was formed as a combination of the Danish words “leg godt,” which means “play well.”

Even the big players made this mistake. Honda named their new model Honda Fitta with a slogan, “Small on the outside, big on the inside.” Unfortunately, they discovered too late that “fitta” is the name for female private parts in Sweeden, Norway, and Denmark, costing them thousands of dollars for rebranding.

5. Names with added prefix or suffix

This technique consists of adding a prefix or a suffix to a word that represents the product. Like Shopify or Spotify, Apple also used this technique to name its products iPhone, iPad, and iPod.

You can add prefixes and suffixes arbitrarily or because of the specific meaning or connotations they have. For example, -ex usually signifies “expert” or “excellency,” so we have Rolex, Kleenex, and Windex. Suffixes -elle or -ella are typically used for feminine and gentle products like P&G’s Naturella.

To get inspired, take a look at the top trends of the moment. These days, popular names often end with -ly, -io, -able, -ify…

6. Names from cut words

Opposite to the previous technique, a product name can be formed by removing a part of the longer word that describes it. It can be either a beginning or a word ending. That’s how Excel (from “excellent”) and Acura (from “accurate”) got their names.

7. Rhyming names

Just like 7-Eleven, FireWire, and StubHub sound appealing, using a rhymed name can enhance your success cause human brains easily remember rhymes. Moreover, these names are recognized as funny and unusual, which increases brands’ possibilities to be remembered by customers.

8. Names made of verbs

4 bonus tips

Sure, creating a good product name is easier said than done, so for the end of this post, we’re giving you give you 4 bonus tips to help you in the brainstorming and decision-making processes in order to come up with a suitable name for your product.

1. Brainstorm like a master

Take a block of sticky-notes, a pen, and a stopwatch. Then try to come up with as many product-related words as you can in 15 minutes. Without evaluating, without judging, write down anything that comes to your mind because there are no stupid ideas in brainstorming!

One of the helpful techniques to generate ideas is Mind mapping. After the time is up, try to create potential product names by using the words you wrote and the naming techniques written in this post. 

2. Write an advertising headline

If the brainstorming from no starting point doesn’t work for you, try writing a headline or a short text that describes your product. Then use the words you mentioned in the text and make a product name by following the techniques written above.

3. Helpful tools

Your best friends in this product-naming process will probably be Thesaurus.com and Oxford dictionary, which will help you find the synonyms and uncommon words you can use.

Moreover, there are hundreds of different name generators available online. Even if it might happen that you don’t like any of the names they suggested, you can still use their “way of thinking” and generate some ideas and synonyms to create your own product name.

4. Go outside the building!

After brainstorming and generating the top 3 names that you can apply, use the wisdom of the crowd and interview as many people as you can about your name ideas. Approach your family members, friends, and, if possible, real customers of your product, and you’ll see which name fits your product most.

Besides asking a question “Which one do you like more?” ask them about associations the name gives them, how they imagine the product called like that, how much it costs, for whom it is meant, whether it is easy to pronounce and remember, and you’ll see if you’re on the right track.

Let’s get the party started

With all of this being said, it’s time for some hands-on knowledge. You have all the tips and shortcuts that you need and instead of saying “I’m not creative enough,” think of the product-naming as one more skill that you can gain by experimenting and practicing.

Give a name to one product and then to one more, and you’ll see that each of the following will be easier than the previous. For all the questions and feedback on the created names, you know where to find us

It’s 2021 and dropshipping isn’t a new business model anymore. The market is saturated, and it continues to record new online stores each day. Still, claiming that dropshipping is no longer a profitable business is far away from the truth.

People just get disappointed when they see that making a Shopify site, adding 30 products to it, and waiting for the magic to happen, guess what – doesn’t work.

Today, with thousands of dropshippers out there selling the same or similar products to yours, it is more than ever important to find a way to differentiate yourself from others and be the one who will draw the attention of potential customers.

That’s where micro-niche and one product stores take the stage.

Creating a micro-niche or one product store gives more than one advantage to dropshippers who decide to put some effort into designing a store like that.

Micro-niche vs. one product store

Creating a micro-niche or one product store gives more than one advantage to dropshippers who decide to put some effort into designing a shop like that:

Possibility to build a brand

A store specialized in a specific field gives the customers a feeling that it’s the only or the best place to buy a particular product. It allows you to present your brand as a group of experts for a certain field, gives you a more professional and exclusive look, and makes content creation a lot easier.

We’ve shared 6 crucial tips for brand building in dropshipping in this post.

Connection with the customers

When you know who your customers are, you know which Social Media channels they use, what kind of content they like, which profiles they follow, their values and interests… you know who you’re talking to. By connecting with your tribe, you won’t be just another store anymore, but someone who gives an additional value and participates in their everyday lives. All that will lead to creating a loyal group of followers and customers.

However, the downside of setting a micro-niche or a one product store is the freedom that you lose in testing and experimenting with different products and niches that don’t fit in the concept of the store you created. That’s why it’s completely okay, moreover strongly suggested to spend more time on the research in order to create a store with high profitability.

We’ve broken down this post into two parts to help you find both – micro-niches or THE one product, no matter what you decide to go with. 

What is a good micro-niche for dropshipping

Micro-niche with the high demand

Many dropshippers search for fresh micro-niches with no competition, which is a logical way of thinking. But if we look from another angle, no competition usually equals no demand, and no demand means no sales.

In this industry, setting the trend and making a new micro-niche popular requires a lot of money and investments. Therefore it is better to leave that job to the “big fishes,” and then just follow existing trends and use the opportunities given. 

By adding the AliInsider extension to your Google Chrome browser, you can easily check what the most popular and most profitable niches at the moment are. Besides the detailed analytics of any product on AliExpess, Ali Insider provides you the list with 30k fastest selling products of the moment. By typing in the name of the niche you are interested in (in the 30k fastest selling products list), you’ll get the number of its average daily sales, average daily dropshipping sales, average daily dropshipping revenue, and the number of products in that niche.

Micro-niche that gives the solution or triggers the emotions

Another option is micro-niches that provoke different emotions. Those niches target people with a specific passion or hobby like pet owners, fishers, musicians, and many others. Unlike in problem-solving niches, products in the passion-niche stores don’t have to be necessary “useful.” A cat owner will certainly go crazy if s/he sees a mug with a cat on it or a ballet dancers when they see a clock counting only 5,6,7, and 8.

Evergreen micro-niches

Looking at the market trends, we can see that from time to time, certain winning products appear on AliExpress and record an enormous number of daily sales and profit, but after a month or so, their sales are beginning to decline. We all went through the fidget spinner mania, and for those who have been there on time, selling those products must have paid off. But selling short-term trends isn’t worth investing in brand creation, learning about the niche, and getting to know your target audience because it won’t take long before you’ll need to switch to another store. That’s why the key to a sustainable store is in searching for constant trends with a permanent demand.

The micro-niche you’re familiar with

That’s why there is no answer to the question: “What niche should I pick?”. It is an individual thing that depends on many factors. A profitable niche for one dropshipper doesn’t have to be profitable for another.

Appropriate target group size, approachability, and offer

We already talked about the advantages of smaller target groups when it comes to the creation of a community. Still, there have to be enough people interested in a certain micro-niche in order to have enough sales and a successful shop. You can quickly check how big your target audience is by going through other Instagram and Facebook profiles and groups, using the Google Trends tool or Facebook audience insights.

The approachability of a target group matters too. Does your target group use Social Media? Are there specific websites where you can place your ads? Instagram profiles targeting the same group? How easy can you find your target group on Social Media?

Once you have a list of possible niches for dropshipping, you need to be sure there is a decent offer of those products on AliExpress, too, so you can create a store you’re planning.

Which product to pick for a one-product store

With one product store, a tactic is a bit different. You should still build a brand around your store and connect with your customers, but the first task on your checklist should be to find a winning product good enough to be the only and sufficient product for your store. 

Although just finding a winning product isn’t enough to make a successful store, because it also takes time, effort, creativity, marketing, and sales skills, some characteristics are typical for most of the winning products. You can use them as indicators to check if you are walking on the right path.

Common characteristics that winning products have and things that you should consider first when searching for one:

• Problem-solving

With problem-solving products, you offer your customers value by meeting a real need or giving a better solution than existing alternatives. When people see an ad that aims directly to the core of their problem, it’s much easier for them to make a decision that is supported by reasoning.

• Exclusivity

The potential winning product shouldn’t be widely available and easy to get offline. That’s why typical winning products have some unusual characteristics, something new and unique for that type of product.

• Wow factor

A winning product should be able to say everything just in a couple of seconds – why you need it and what is so special and unique about it. It should stop you, impress you, and make you say – WOW, I want it.

• Profitability

When setting a price, a quick checklist should include:

-Cost of the product and additional expenses

-The perceived value of the product

-The purchasing power of a target market

-Competition prices.

If you’re looking for deeper insights on finding a winning product and tools that can help you in it, check out our post Winning products hunt in 2021: how to spot them first.