Why Design Matters? Wesabe vs Mint.com

This is a little blurb I pulled out off a year end article.  I thought it was a great example of how a better designed concept that was very similar to Wesabe arrived and just dominated it almost immediately.   It seems so arbitrary why one does well and one doesn’t, but in this case it was more clear.  In no small part it was because it had a phenomenal name, elegant design, and a tremendous user interface.   

Wesabe

A personal finance Web site based in San Francisco. Wesabe opened in 2006 and closed in July.

AT ITS PEAK Wesabe was one of the first movers in the Web 2.0 financial space. Its founders, Mr. Hedlund and Jason Knight, envisioned a site that would help consumers budget their money and make better spending decisions. The company received two rounds of venture capital financing totaling $4.7 million and signed up 150,000 members in its first year.

WHAT WENT WRONG Ten months after Wesabe’s introduction, a competitor, Mint.com, appeared. As Mr. Hedlund acknowledges, Mint had a better name and better design and was easier to use. Within nine months, Mint had 300,000 users and $17 million in venture financing. In 2009, Mint was sold to Intuit for $170 million.

LOOKING BACK Mr. Hedlund wishes he had simplified the consumer’s experience. “We wanted to help people,” he said, “but it was too much work to get that help.”