Brand Names That Are Easy to Read and Pronounce

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Do we judge how trustworthy a person or company is based on their name?

We certainly do if it's a familiar name, or the name suggests we should (e.g. Johnny Goodfaith, Thomas McTrustme, Reliable Industries Inc.).

But we also use meaningless and superficial 'hints' in a name to decide whether to trust what (or who) is behind it.

Imagine a product you want to buy is sold by two different sellers on Amazon: SIBU and VLEGTIQCLAPL.

Everything else is equal (e.g. price, ratings), and neither name means anything.

Who would you buy from?

P.S.: Yes, I know Ariyh is not easy to pronounce. It's because I'm a biased Italian that forgot that everyone else pronounces 'h' (we don't in Italy).

It's pronounced ar-ee ;)

Previous insight: Productize your service (All insights here)

Impacted metrics : Customer acquisition
Channels : Brand name | Brand strategy
For : Both B2C and B2B
Research date : December 2017

Choose a brand name, or at least an online name (e.g. to sell on Amazon), that is easy to pronounce and short.

Potential customers will trust you more and will be more likely to buy from you.

• Previous research found that:

  • Financial stock names (e.g. GOOGL for Google, TSLA for Tesla) that are easier to pronounce outperform hard to pronounce ones

  • Food additives are judged as more dangerous when they have hard to pronounce names

  • People with easy-to-pronounce names are viewed more positively and have higher job positions

  • Statements are rated as more truthful when they come from people with easy-to-pronounce names

• This study found that people judge online sellers with easy to pronounce (vs hard) and short names (vs long) as more trustworthy .

• 10 experiments tested eBay seller profiles with names of different complexity and length and found that:

  • Sellers with easy to pronounce and short names were rated on average 31% (5.1 vs 3.9 on a scale of 10) more trustworthy than ones with difficult to pronounce names

  • Complex names are usually longer, but short names alone (i.e. of the same complexity as long ones) led to a 7% increase in trustworthiness

  • The positive effect worked for both sellers with high ratings (i.e. 5 or 4.5-star ratings) and low ratings (i.e. 3.5 or 3-star ratings)

  • Even when people were warned that they shouldn't be influenced by a seller's name they kept having this bias

  • A similar trustworthiness effect also applied to how easy vs hard to read (e.g. by fonts, color contrast) product descriptions were

( The trustworthiness ratings that people gave to fictional eBay sellers based on how easy or difficult their name was to pronounce - Click to zoom in )

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• Our attitudes are shaped by how easily we are able to mentally process information. The easier something is to process, the better we feel about it. And the better we feel about it, the more we trust it.

• Trust is key in sales because we know that the seller has more information than we do about the quality of the product, for example. The importance is even higher in an online context where we have fewer information points about the other party than we would in a physical environment.

• Several studies have found that a good seller reputation increases not only the probability of a sale but also prices. For example, private eBay sellers with an established good reputation can sell for 8.1% higher prices, on average.

• This study focused on measuring the perceived trustworthiness of sellers. While we know that higher trust drives sales in general, we don't know exactly when and by how much the effects in this study would translate to higher sales.

• In the study, English-speakers rated several real eBay usernames based on how easy or hard to pronounce they were

  • Easy

    • Drivesupply

    • Britishdeals

    • Okspots

  • Hard

    • Torinofotoerre

    • Noidicasa2

    • Teccoltd

• International sales add another layer of difficulty to finding an ideal brand name for most customers. For example, Peugeot, Tag Heuer, and even Nutella are easy to pronounce in their home markets but not abroad.

• Ford, Uber, and Coca-Cola are good examples of brand names that are short and easy to pronounce in most languages.

• Use a brand name that is simple to pronounce and short. Try to do the same for your product names.

• To craft a trustworthy name:

  • Pay attention to your main market language's use of vowels and consonants. In most languages, pronounceable names are rich in vowels rather than consonants

  • Keep it as short as possible

  • Test it with a group of potential customers how easy people they find it to pronounce (e.g. survey 10-20 people)

• For added benefit, use a feminine-sounding brand name and write it in UPPERCASE or lowercase based on your brand positioning. You can even use a 'handwritten' font, but make sure it's easy to read.

Lab and online experiments. Germany and United States

Silva, R. R., Chrobot, N., Newman, E., Schwarz, N., & Topolinski, S. (December 2017). Make it short and easy: Username complexity determines trustworthiness above and beyond objective reputation. Frontiers in psychology.

[Link to paper]

University of Cologne, SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities, and University of Southern California. Germany, Poland, and United States

Remember: This paper could be disproven in the future (although this is rare). It also may not be generalizable to your situation. If it's a risky change, always test it on a small scale before rolling it out widely.

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