Project Codename Summarizer Part 3 - A small detour: ASO and naming the app

In the last couple of issues, I explained what this app was about and how I built a very basic prototype.

After validating that this prototype is technically viable, it’s time to take a small detour into a different area.

Before going back to code, I wanted to do a bit of marketing.

For indie apps, if you want to be profitable, marketing is key, at least as important as the technical side.

So I did some ASO research.

ASO (App Store Optimization) is to apps what SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is to websites. It’s a whole strategy where you carefully craft your app’s name, subtitle, description, keywords, and screenshots to increase your discoverability on the App Store and convince users to download (and hopefully pay for) your app.

One tool that often comes up is the Astro app. I bought a subscription and began keyword research.

The goal of a keyword is two-fold: it needs to be popular enough among user searches and not too difficult so you can compete. Astro presents both metrics on a scale from 0 to 100.

The usual recommendation is to aim for a popularity above 20–40 and a difficulty below 50–60.

I did some research and found a few interesting keywords in this niche, nothing groundbreaking, but hopefully enough for decent traffic.

I also used this opportunity to look at the competition and was pleased to notice that apps using the same approach as mine were quite rare, if not nonexistent. (This is probably because the APIs I use are expensive, so the profit margin is thinner.)

I also wanted to name this app, so I began brainstorming with ChatGPT o3, asking it to generate names within a few constraints and to check for existing brand names as well as domain availability.

I got a lot of candidates, dozens, hundreds even. It was difficult to sift through them, but I ultimately found something: Summiqo.

It’s unique, free, three syllables long, refers to the summary aspect, and all its domain names are available.

Next time, we will definitely go back to the technical side, I promise! So stay tuned.