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Why Wesabe Lost to Mint

blog.precipice.org

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Re: Why Wesabe Lost to Mint

#21

Post by christonog »

vaksel wrote: post #16

seems like their mistake was ignoring yodlee and trying to make their own stuff...which lost them a lot of traction. had they launched with yodlee, Mint would have been nothing more but a "better designed wesabe" seems to me like they should have spent the cash to subscribe to yodlee, and then spent their effort building their own version like they ended up doing.

Yeah, but it's a case of "shoulda, woulda, coulda." In retrospect, it was an easy decision. But, if it were your startup, would you have tied yourself to a single, almost bankrupt, vendor? I don't think I would have. Though it is better to buy software rather than build in most cases, there didn't seem to be alternatives rather than rolling out their own solution.

Re: Why Wesabe Lost to Mint

#22

Post by bretthellman »

The name Wesabe had a huge part to do with losing. Patzer is right, with a name like Wesabe you have ZERO chances of capitalizing on word of mouth. Before you buy a domain for your business, find 10 random people and ask them to type out the domain. If they fail or have to stop to even think about how to type out the domain, it's a failure.

Re: Why Wesabe Lost to Mint

#23

Post by mattmaroon »

On the name thing I see a lot of misunderstanding about this. A name can be a little silly, sure. Google, Yahoo, Amazon, Mint. People use this to justify terrible domain names all the time.

There are a few things the above have in common that Wesabe doesn't:

1. They're real words. (Technically Google isn't, but it's a misspelling of a real word that probably more people than not would make.Very few people, if told about it, would type in googol.com). Look at the Alexa top 100 in the US, it's almost entirely real words.

2. They're easily pronounced. If I tell my friend about Yahoo.com, he's going to be able to type it in or easily Google for it. I assume Wesabe is similar to wasabi, but I'm still not even sure about that.

Re: Why Wesabe Lost to Mint

#24

Post by bretthellman »

bretthellman wrote: post #22

The name Wesabe had a huge part to do with losing. Patzer is right, with a name like Wesabe you have ZERO chances of capitalizing on word of mouth. Before you buy a domain for your business, find 10 random people and ask them to type out the domain. If they fail or have to stop to even think about how to type out the domain, it's a failure.

Also, Mint didn't ignore the power of SEO... Even before the product had launched they had a blog that was providing inbound traffic.

Re: Why Wesabe Lost to Mint

#25

Post by lionhearted »

He doesn't give the name element enough credit. It's huge. Mint is one of the two examples I give of best brand names ever.

Not kidding. Ever. Silk Soymilk is the other example I use.

Mint's a killer brand name, I think it'd be literally impossible to beat Mint on natural branding in personal finance, it's the most perfect name I could imagine. It has double, good meanings - "Mint" as in a place where coins/money are minted, and of course the plant/candy. Then the plant/candy is associated with being fresh, clean, safe, and it's colored green, again like money.

It's just genius. It's also only four letters, easy to remember, relevant, and they got the domain name for it. It's really, really good. The only other name so good is "silk soymilk", for basically all the same reasons. (soymilk -SoymILK - easy to remember, silk is clean/smooth/elegant/upscale, four letters, hard to forget, etc).

Seriously, Mint might be the best named/naturally branded online company ever. I'm not joking. If I ever had to do a lecture on naming and branding, I'd 100% for sure use Mint as an example.

Re: Why Wesabe Lost to Mint

#27

Post by mikeryan »

bmelton wrote: post #14
mikeryan wrote: post #4

This "Myth": Mint's design, while definitely very appealing and definitely a factor in getting people to trust the company, doesn't seem to me to be enough to explain the different outcomes, Is contradicted by this: Second, Mint focused on making the user do almost no work at all, by automatically editing and categorizing their data, reducing the number of fields in their signup form, and giving them immediate gratif…

You're conflating design with UI and UX. I think the point was that being prettier alone wouldn't have won Mint the war, but being way more usable totally did. If you stripped the pretty colors, backgrounds and images from both products, the user experience for Mint is still miles better than Wesabe's was, and that is the difference.

I'm actually (it looks poorly) trying to not conflate UI and UX. I'm trying to say that design is the entire experience both the UX and UI.

Re: Why Wesabe Lost to Mint

#28

Post by rokhayakebe »

Wesabe built our own data acquisition system, first using downloadable client programs (partially because that was easier and partially to preserve users' privacy) and later using a Yodlee-like web interface

That is the real product, the real company, launch it.

Re: Why Wesabe Lost to Mint

#29

Post by neolefty »

To summarize:

- Give instant gratification; require as little work as possible from your users

- Be visible; Mint advertised heavily; neither site was viral

Other smaller factors too, but those seem to be the biggies, based on Marc's article and comments here.

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