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Why Wesabe Lost to Mint

blog.precipice.org

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Re: Why Wesabe Lost to Mint

#31

Post by neolefty »

lionhearted wrote: post #25

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 a…

Yes, and they made great use of it.

But if they hadn't backed it up with good design and instant gratification, they wouldn't have gained traction.

Re: Why Wesabe Lost to Mint

#32

Post by DevX101 »

mattmaroon wrote: post #23

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 ab…

Nothing silly about the name "Mint"

Re: Why Wesabe Lost to Mint

#33

Post by stackthat »

lionhearted wrote: post #25

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 a…

Mint is a great name agreed but what's the actual impact? 5%? 10%? 50%? Possibly not even 5%

Re: Why Wesabe Lost to Mint

#35

Post by ollerac »

lionhearted wrote: post #25

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 a…

Something about Mint struck me as refreshing; I thought it was mostly their home page design because I always thought their name a little generic. But you're completely right -- it's a great name and their website design really reinforces the feelings associated with the plant.

I'd love to hear what you think makes a really good name. What about playful-type/kinda-made-up names like Google and Yahoo and Reddit?

I spend a lot of time starting up new projects, so I'm always looking for good names and it'd be cool to hear what you think, since you obviously spend a bit of time thinking about this sort of thing.

Recently I was thinking about starting a lesson sharing site for teachers called Lessonauts. It's a silly name, I know, but it stuck in my head. I also considered LessonNotes, Educape, and ShareLesson.

Re: Why Wesabe Lost to Mint

#36

Post by bmelton »

mikeryan wrote: post #27
bmelton wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Oh, in that case, I respectfully disagree. To me, the 'visual design' of a site is what it looks like in Photoshop, or Gimp, or what have you, before it is even necessarily sliced into even HTML bits.

Once it is sliced into HTML, and the mouseovers, hover elements and all that jazz are added (or not, depending on your workflow), that's when I consider it a 'UI' instead of a 'design'.

Before either of those happens, you need to have at least given consideration to your 'UX', which is a concept encompassing movement between functions, what goes where, how you move from page to page, what glows or fades when you hover / click / etc., and all that jazz.

Perhaps I'm the idiot here, and I'm segregating the concepts unnecessarily, but I don't feel like I am, though I'm sure my explanation here is poor (sorry -- pressed for time).

Re: Why Wesabe Lost to Mint

#37

Post by efsavage »

lionhearted wrote: post #25

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 a…

Yeah, a name like mint.com has a truckload of authority, while wesabe sounds like some foodie's blog.

"I think the examples of Amazon, Yahoo, eBay, Google, and plenty of others make it plain that even ludicrous names (as all of those were thought to be when the companies launched) can go on to be great brands. "

None of those names are "ludicrous", nor were they when they started. They don't have much to do with their function, but as names go, they're solid. All of them are spelled the way a normal person would guess (even google is more guessable than googol), which adds a little functional value, but more importantly adds to comfort and trust.

All else being equal, would you be more likely to entrust financial access to mint.com or myntt.com?

Re: Why Wesabe Lost to Mint

#38

Post by sandipc »

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.

yes, but even before Mint, there was Yodlee MoneyCenter... so you could say that Mint was really nothing more than a "better designed MoneyCenter"

Re: Why Wesabe Lost to Mint

#39

Post by [deleted] »

efsavage wrote: post #37
lionhearted wrote: post #25

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 a…

Yeah, a name like mint.com has a truckload of authority, while wesabe sounds like some foodie's blog. "I think the examples of Amazon, Yahoo, eBay, Google, and plenty of others make it plain that even ludicrous names (as all of those were thought to be when the companies launched) can go on to be great brands. " None of those names are "ludicrous", nor were they when they started. They don't have much to do with thei…

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