08
2011
The Article Domainers Wish Every Business Framed
Happy new year everyone. I will continue my policy of blogging only when I absolutely have something to say and this is one of those times. I saw this article in Yahoo and I wish more people especially people in business read this article or at least the part of it that I am going to devote this short post to. Believe me this is worth every second of the 3 minutes of your life you are about to share with me.
The article is on Six companies companies that did not survive 2010 and one of the companies there really caught my attention as a domainer. Since I am a domainer and do not want to be accused of embelishing the article, I am going to do a long quote instead of putting this juicy story in my own words.
Eliene Zimmerman of The New York Time writes about Wesabe a personal finance Web site based in San Fransicico;
” 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.”
All I can say is what a terrible name Wesabe is. This guy did not have to own Mint.com when he started but he could have at least opted for a better name than Wesabe.
Reference: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Six-Companies-That-Did-Not-nytimes-3376907748.html?x=0
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All I can say it ” amen “. It’s about time somebody else gets it. Thanks for posting this.
I have to disagree. I don’t think the name helped but it simply came down to a competitor that was better. It could have been called Save.com and it would have failed. I have never seen one case in history that a bad domain killed a company. It certainly can hurt and make it difficult for the consumer to find, but a great site, concept and business plan will always trump a bad domain.
While a domain name can help in branding, search ranking and in the case of a .COM in type-in traffic, the domain name alone cannot guarantee a business’ success. Businesses in prime locations can suffer from the cost of being in those locations (i.e. restaurants on Fort Lauderdale Beach which have closed). Sometimes a location close to the ideal spot is best because the rent savings can be significant. But of course location can still make a huge difference in a business’ success.
A domain name alone can’t guarantee success, but in this case the company could have used a fraction of their $4.7 M financing to buy a killer domain with some traffic that would have greatly helped. Wesabe is a poor name, and doesn’t pass the radio or word of mouth test.
Hello Frankie,
Thank you for bringing this to our attention. Although some may say that a domain address cannot guarantee success, What is the odds on truth of a domain names importance?
All words lay down an emotional foundation in our minds.Words emit emotional energy that is picked up and either attracts attention or drives it away. So I ask you how important are words?
Gratefully, Jeff Schneider (Contact Group)
“All I can say is what a terrible name Wesabe is.”
I remember thinking when Wesabe first came out and was getting coverage that it was a big mistake to pick a name that sounds so much like Wasabi.
Possibility for confusion was too great.
Yea Wesabe is a “bad” name if you look compared to mint BUT it is brandable so even though Mint is very much generic, there marketing still can be to blame as well.
Shane, I do not know how or why your comment ended in the spam folder. I had to dig it out personally.
Damn, that makes sense about the easier, cleaner mint.com name…but really, how much of it was mint.com had better c0d3rs@work and a better site. They probably could have traded names and still lost…and i’m looking around the screen as I type this and it actually felt like I was flying for a second lol!! Or at least up in the air typing this…that’s funny.
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