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I'm a co-founder of Ninite. We hear this a lot, but I don't think it's a big deal. Traffic has been growing well since we launched and we install 1,000,000 apps

by swies 15y ago

I'm a co-founder of Ninite. We hear this a lot, but I don't think it's a big deal. Traffic has been growing well since we launched and we install 1,000,000 apps every week now. The real problem is that there's not really a term for what we do. The key part in all these stories is that even searching for us is hard. We're doing something totally new so we might as well call it something totally new. I'm also just aesthetically opposed to descriptive names. The other part of this is that we made the product so lightweight that it goes away after you use it. This is one of the reasons people love it, but it does hurt retention. I think we got this choice right though. It's way more important for people to love your product than awkwardly hook them somehow. If they love the product they'll get back to you. That said, we have just released an auto-updater product that helps solve this retention issue in a natural way. https://ninite.com/updater/ https://ninite.com/updater/ It will be interesting to see if that reduces these complaints about Ninite being hard to find and remember.

ora600 15y ago
This is almost like Oracle support telling me "There is no problem" after I call them about my database corruption. The author, who obviously loves your software, couldn't find you enough times that he wrote a blog post about it. There are several reddit thread about this issue. Several replies to this thread express the same frustration - they can't find your software when they know it exists and want to use it. You hear it a lot yourself too. But still you don't think its a big deal. I'm wondering what kind of evidence will convince you its a big deal. It sounds like awesome software. I'm glad I've heard of it. I just hope I'll remember the name when I'll need it.
- swies 15y ago
  Oops, I didn't mean to come off as saying that the author's problem isn't real. I understand where he's coming from and we hear similar things from a lot of users. But, there's not a good solution available so I don't really worry about it day to day. We're not going to change the name at this point, and I think people have started to see us enough that its becoming less and less of a problem. Actually, lots of people do remember the name. Our top 26 searches to find the site are variations or misspellings on the name. 27 is "install multiple programs" and then we're back to the name until "multi installer" at 40. We got a quarter million visits last month from people typing ninite or ninite.com into google. I also don't think founders of new startups should fret too much over naming. Just make something great, release it, and improve it. The catchiest name in the world won't save a bad product. Product is the high bit here, naming is lower than you'd think.
  - eberfreitas 15y ago
    For some reason Ninite sounds very familiar to me, so it's easy to remember...
  - smanek 15y ago
    You might be right - but you can't logically draw the conclusion that 'lots of people remember the name' based on the evidence presented. The is no correlation between words people end up reaching your site by, and words that they are trying to find your site by. Consider the world where 10M people are trying to find Ninite, but forget the name and unsuccessfully google "keep multiple programs up to date". Similarly, 1M people google for some variation of Ninite, and all find your site. Your referrer logs would show that all users reaching your site remembered your name, even though you're throwing away 90% of your potential user base. That's like trying to disprove the hypothesis: "You don't network enough, so not enough people know you" with the evidence "99% of the calls I get are from people that know me, so clearly a lot of people know me".
  - JoeAltmaier 15y ago
    No good solution available? You state that you are not going to use the best available good solution - a memorable name. That's very different. Consider branding the product with two names? Coming up with a version name that is memorable? Doing some SOE that works? Throwing away customers because you have enough - nice to be in that boat.
phillco 15y ago
I think the reason for your success is that Ninite is simply an excellent product. If your product is truly great, it'll usually overcome problems in naming, promotion, design, etc. (I remember there was a Joel on Software post about how Naptster's UI design was terrible, but it didn't matter, because it was Napster). But, we'll never know how successful Ninite could have been had it been easier to remember. Of out curiosity, how did you come up with the name? EDIT: Ah. http://blog.ninite.com/post/620277259/how-ninite-was-named-by-a-computer-program http://blog.ninite.com/post/620277259/how-ninite-was-named-b...
- swies 15y ago
  I bet we'd be exactly as successful with a better name. Are there examples of products where an awesome name made them into successes? Or even had a significant impact? I'm sure you could tank a product with an offensive name or something that required weird unicode characters. But I think it's only worth getting a passing grade on the name and then going for an A+ on the product. I guess the argument is that if you're right on the margin a better name could tip you into winning. But I'd already consider a product a failure if it only gets to that middle ground on its own. If the name makes a difference I'd say you're not working on the right sort of problem.
  - herval 15y ago
    It does make a difference for people: http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/archives/2007/05/names_really_do.html http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/archives/2007... My hunch is that it also makes a difference for products, but I don't have any data on that...
  - name123 15y ago
    > Are there examples of products where an awesome name made them into successes? Or even had a significant impact? YouTube. What differentiated YouTube from all the other video sharing sites? A good name and logo.
    - beambot 15y ago
toast76 15y ago
I think it's less of a name issue, and more of a customer engagement issue. If your customers can't remember your name, you're not talking to them enough. Doesn't matter how light weight your app is. Having said that, I'm not sure why the OP wouldn't just google "automated setup tool"....
- swies 15y ago
  We operate under the assumption that our customers don't want to be "engaged" or talked to. People use Ninite to get apps installed quickly and without any hassle. That's it. They don't use it because they need a new friend, or want to be marketed to, or don't get enough email, or want to see some ads, or want to create another account somewhere on the internet. So we don't have any of that. Our pages/visit in Google Analytics is 2.00. The main page then the installer download page. We've got other pages, but they are literally a rounding error.
code_duck 15y ago
I'm always going to remember the name now that I read an article using it as an example of a bad name. It doesn't stand out to me as a terrible name, not worse than many others that bear no relation to their functions. It sounds like a great product. I've wondered a solution for the lack of a package repository for common Windows programs.
todayiamme 15y ago
I think that there's something more going on than a simple naming issue over here. As a product you're exactly in the right place to be. You see, your product isn't something "cool" that people should use. It's now a fact of life. It's an extension of your users environment. This means that they take it for granted, because they just can't imagine life without it. That's an amazing position to be in for a product. Think about it. When was the last time you thought, "hey I'm going to send you a messing using an electronic messaging system that allows me to send files and store things on a server!" You just say, "I'll drop you a line". You don't even need to talk about the technology over here! Email has become just another fact of life. Some technologies become so ingrained into your life, that they are the technological equivalent of drinking water. It's something completely natural that you will never think twice about. This means if you play your cards well, you're here to stay...
- swies 15y ago
  Thanks, this is a really great compliment. One of my favorite things about Ninite is that we get thank you letters from grandmothers who hear about us on the local news and orders from Fortune 500 companies for the same basic product.
  - todayiamme 15y ago
    That's the funny thing. It isn't praise for your product. It's just what your product has become. Who knows if it will stay that way, but what it is right now is something simply beautiful. You know I would just love to talk more with you about your product. Is there someway I can email you?
    - swies 15y ago
      Sure, I'm pat@ninite.com
computator 15y ago
> I'm also just aesthetically opposed to descriptive names. In your case, I think a coined name is OK because any alternative that I can think of--like "Multi Product Installer"--sounds horribly generic. Multi Product Installer is no easier to remember than Automated Setup Utility, or Quick Choice and Download, or whatever. By I do think that for a fast-moving market, a descriptive name (or at least a memorable one) is pretty important. Movies are great example of this. I'm convinced that some really good movies that have done badly at the box office failed because of the their names. Two examples that come to mind are "Waking Ned Devine" and "ffolkes". You get no clue what the movies are about from these titles. Are they comedies or action movies? Who knows. It would be so much better for these films to have been called, say, "Get the Dead Guy's Fortune" and "North Sea Hijack", respectively. I've personally chosen movies to watch based solely on the title (when the film I came to actually see was sold out, for example), so there's no denying that it can have a big effect when you need to make choices quickly. In this respect, "Facebook" makes sense, especially in a super-fast arena like social media software. "Google", by the way, is not a counter-example to my point because the name is memorable (by association with googol) to techie people who would have been the early users.
adrianwaj 15y ago
I remember when you guys were baseshield... ninite could mean like (nigh-night) as in good night.."say good night to your installation problems"
rubergly 15y ago
Hey swies, I have some tangentially related feedback. I've always had ninite.com bookmarked since I found it, and the other day I was going through and sorting my bookmarks; when ninite.com loaded, I was immediately thrown off. From what I recall, the site's design used to be dark and looked very simple and professional to me; as soon as I saw this light-blue design with the "Featured in..." on the right, I thought "oh, no, the site was sold and became some park domain from the 90s...". It's weird, after that initial reaction, as soon as I read anything on the page, it was clear that everything was normal; the more I look at the design, the more I think everything looks fine and there's nothing bad about the design. But I definitely had that reaction and almost turned away from the site on the quick, and thought that feedback might be useful. At the very least, I think you should consider redesigning how the "Featured in..." is displayed; when it's a bunch of logos as one .png, it looks like a big ad and is a big turnoff until you notice what it's saying. I think something laid out more dynamically than within a box that stands out from the rest of the background would do a lot of good.
- swies 15y ago
  Thanks for the feedback. The lighter designs we've been using lately are much more readable (they've pretty much eliminated common questions about things we already say on the homepage). That block of logos is just temporary, we just put the current design up a week ago and haven't had much time to iterate on it yet.
naner 15y ago
The real problem is that there's not really a term for what we do. Package Manager (or Software Manager)? Seems like a Windows analog to Apt. Googling windows package manager leads me to something called Npackd that looks similar to your tool (though it is quite ugly/complex looking) at at glance.

by swies 15y ago

ora600 15y ago

This is almost like Oracle support telling me "There is no problem" after I call them about my database corruption. The author, who obviously loves your software, couldn't find you enough times that he wrote a blog post about it. There are several reddit thread about this issue. Several replies to this thread express the same frustration - they can't find your software when they know it exists and want to use it. You hear it a lot yourself too. But still you don't think its a big deal. I'm wondering what kind of evidence will convince you its a big deal. It sounds like awesome software. I'm glad I've heard of it. I just hope I'll remember the name when I'll need it.

swies 15y ago
Oops, I didn't mean to come off as saying that the author's problem isn't real. I understand where he's coming from and we hear similar things from a lot of users. But, there's not a good solution available so I don't really worry about it day to day. We're not going to change the name at this point, and I think people have started to see us enough that its becoming less and less of a problem. Actually, lots of people do remember the name. Our top 26 searches to find the site are variations or misspellings on the name. 27 is "install multiple programs" and then we're back to the name until "multi installer" at 40. We got a quarter million visits last month from people typing ninite or ninite.com into google. I also don't think founders of new startups should fret too much over naming. Just make something great, release it, and improve it. The catchiest name in the world won't save a bad product. Product is the high bit here, naming is lower than you'd think.
- eberfreitas 15y ago
  For some reason Ninite sounds very familiar to me, so it's easy to remember...
- smanek 15y ago
  You might be right - but you can't logically draw the conclusion that 'lots of people remember the name' based on the evidence presented. The is no correlation between words people end up reaching your site by, and words that they are trying to find your site by. Consider the world where 10M people are trying to find Ninite, but forget the name and unsuccessfully google "keep multiple programs up to date". Similarly, 1M people google for some variation of Ninite, and all find your site. Your referrer logs would show that all users reaching your site remembered your name, even though you're throwing away 90% of your potential user base. That's like trying to disprove the hypothesis: "You don't network enough, so not enough people know you" with the evidence "99% of the calls I get are from people that know me, so clearly a lot of people know me".
- JoeAltmaier 15y ago
  No good solution available? You state that you are not going to use the best available good solution - a memorable name. That's very different. Consider branding the product with two names? Coming up with a version name that is memorable? Doing some SOE that works? Throwing away customers because you have enough - nice to be in that boat.

phillco 15y ago

I think the reason for your success is that Ninite is simply an excellent product. If your product is truly great, it'll usually overcome problems in naming, promotion, design, etc. (I remember there was a Joel on Software post about how Naptster's UI design was terrible, but it didn't matter, because it was Napster). But, we'll never know how successful Ninite could have been had it been easier to remember. Of out curiosity, how did you come up with the name? EDIT: Ah. http://blog.ninite.com/post/620277259/how-ninite-was-named-by-a-computer-program http://blog.ninite.com/post/620277259/how-ninite-was-named-b...

swies 15y ago
I bet we'd be exactly as successful with a better name. Are there examples of products where an awesome name made them into successes? Or even had a significant impact? I'm sure you could tank a product with an offensive name or something that required weird unicode characters. But I think it's only worth getting a passing grade on the name and then going for an A+ on the product. I guess the argument is that if you're right on the margin a better name could tip you into winning. But I'd already consider a product a failure if it only gets to that middle ground on its own. If the name makes a difference I'd say you're not working on the right sort of problem.
- herval 15y ago
  It does make a difference for people: http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/archives/2007/05/names_really_do.html http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/archives/2007... My hunch is that it also makes a difference for products, but I don't have any data on that...
- name123 15y ago
  > Are there examples of products where an awesome name made them into successes? Or even had a significant impact? YouTube. What differentiated YouTube from all the other video sharing sites? A good name and logo.
  - beambot 15y ago

toast76 15y ago

I think it's less of a name issue, and more of a customer engagement issue. If your customers can't remember your name, you're not talking to them enough. Doesn't matter how light weight your app is. Having said that, I'm not sure why the OP wouldn't just google "automated setup tool"....

swies 15y ago
We operate under the assumption that our customers don't want to be "engaged" or talked to. People use Ninite to get apps installed quickly and without any hassle. That's it. They don't use it because they need a new friend, or want to be marketed to, or don't get enough email, or want to see some ads, or want to create another account somewhere on the internet. So we don't have any of that. Our pages/visit in Google Analytics is 2.00. The main page then the installer download page. We've got other pages, but they are literally a rounding error.

code_duck 15y ago

I'm always going to remember the name now that I read an article using it as an example of a bad name. It doesn't stand out to me as a terrible name, not worse than many others that bear no relation to their functions. It sounds like a great product. I've wondered a solution for the lack of a package repository for common Windows programs.

todayiamme 15y ago

I think that there's something more going on than a simple naming issue over here. As a product you're exactly in the right place to be. You see, your product isn't something "cool" that people should use. It's now a fact of life. It's an extension of your users environment. This means that they take it for granted, because they just can't imagine life without it. That's an amazing position to be in for a product. Think about it. When was the last time you thought, "hey I'm going to send you a messing using an electronic messaging system that allows me to send files and store things on a server!" You just say, "I'll drop you a line". You don't even need to talk about the technology over here! Email has become just another fact of life. Some technologies become so ingrained into your life, that they are the technological equivalent of drinking water. It's something completely natural that you will never think twice about. This means if you play your cards well, you're here to stay...

swies 15y ago
Thanks, this is a really great compliment. One of my favorite things about Ninite is that we get thank you letters from grandmothers who hear about us on the local news and orders from Fortune 500 companies for the same basic product.
- todayiamme 15y ago
  That's the funny thing. It isn't praise for your product. It's just what your product has become. Who knows if it will stay that way, but what it is right now is something simply beautiful. You know I would just love to talk more with you about your product. Is there someway I can email you?
  - swies 15y ago
    Sure, I'm pat@ninite.com

computator 15y ago

> I'm also just aesthetically opposed to descriptive names. In your case, I think a coined name is OK because any alternative that I can think of--like "Multi Product Installer"--sounds horribly generic. Multi Product Installer is no easier to remember than Automated Setup Utility, or Quick Choice and Download, or whatever. By I do think that for a fast-moving market, a descriptive name (or at least a memorable one) is pretty important. Movies are great example of this. I'm convinced that some really good movies that have done badly at the box office failed because of the their names. Two examples that come to mind are "Waking Ned Devine" and "ffolkes". You get no clue what the movies are about from these titles. Are they comedies or action movies? Who knows. It would be so much better for these films to have been called, say, "Get the Dead Guy's Fortune" and "North Sea Hijack", respectively. I've personally chosen movies to watch based solely on the title (when the film I came to actually see was sold out, for example), so there's no denying that it can have a big effect when you need to make choices quickly. In this respect, "Facebook" makes sense, especially in a super-fast arena like social media software. "Google", by the way, is not a counter-example to my point because the name is memorable (by association with googol) to techie people who would have been the early users.

adrianwaj 15y ago

I remember when you guys were baseshield... ninite could mean like (nigh-night) as in good night.."say good night to your installation problems"

rubergly 15y ago

Hey swies, I have some tangentially related feedback. I've always had ninite.com bookmarked since I found it, and the other day I was going through and sorting my bookmarks; when ninite.com loaded, I was immediately thrown off. From what I recall, the site's design used to be dark and looked very simple and professional to me; as soon as I saw this light-blue design with the "Featured in..." on the right, I thought "oh, no, the site was sold and became some park domain from the 90s...". It's weird, after that initial reaction, as soon as I read anything on the page, it was clear that everything was normal; the more I look at the design, the more I think everything looks fine and there's nothing bad about the design. But I definitely had that reaction and almost turned away from the site on the quick, and thought that feedback might be useful. At the very least, I think you should consider redesigning how the "Featured in..." is displayed; when it's a bunch of logos as one .png, it looks like a big ad and is a big turnoff until you notice what it's saying. I think something laid out more dynamically than within a box that stands out from the rest of the background would do a lot of good.

swies 15y ago
Thanks for the feedback. The lighter designs we've been using lately are much more readable (they've pretty much eliminated common questions about things we already say on the homepage). That block of logos is just temporary, we just put the current design up a week ago and haven't had much time to iterate on it yet.

naner 15y ago

The real problem is that there's not really a term for what we do. Package Manager (or Software Manager)? Seems like a Windows analog to Apt. Googling windows package manager leads me to something called Npackd that looks similar to your tool (though it is quite ugly/complex looking) at at glance.