Showcase - mint.com

Written by David Charney
Posted: March 14, 2009 (12 months ago) | 0 comments

I am on websites all day long. Occasionally a few of those websites catch my eye. Today it is mint.com. Mint.com is the best free way to manage your money. Not only does it provide a fantastic service, but it combines simple marketing, a great design, clear navigation, strong usability, and easy to comprehend financial analytics. It is a great user experience that was built for their audience.

Right from the start the site has a bit of it’s own personality. Fun yet helpful and informative. It’s all about money and so green is the tone you feel throughout the site. Your eye darts around the homepage from the logo to free to manage your money to an easy to read chart, and finally the Sign up in under 5 minutes button (and that is 5 minutes to sign up and add all your financial information - quick and easy). I do wish they had username and password fields on the homepage but I can set my favorites to be the login page rather than the homepage (thus concludes any more nitpicking of this site).

Creating your account takes all but 30 seconds unless, of course, you don’t know your email or zip code. You don’t even need to know your name to sign up. Then what? The experience continues. Just let mint.com guide you. Click on the big Add Bank Account button, type in your bank name, the username and password you use to login to the bank, and click Add. The very few steps required are key to how easy this site is. They really thought through what is absolutly needed and what is bloat information. Mint then pulls in all the information your bank allows very quickly, with an indicator letting you know what is going on. For me, it automatically pulled in my checking and savings account information without me lifting a finger. The same process is used to add your credit card information, debt, etc. The learning curve is small. Just the way I like it.

Once you have your accounts added you are good to go. Mint has a very simple tab navigation across the top with only five options. Less is more, right? The brand developed by mint’s designers is carried throughout the site. Simple icons, few word descriptors, and unique colors used in headings and for links are all part of the experience. Mint does a nice job separating their information from your information. Their information tends to be a shade of gray while your information is often blue or of various color to let your eye focus on the real information. Warnings, alerts, negative or over budget numbers, and any button to add an account or add a budget are in orange. In 20 seconds your brain can parse the what to look at first and what to look at last, just as the designers intended.

It is hard to get stuck when using mint.com. Their system guides you along giving you instructions and even average user spending when you create budgets to give you a foundation for your own spending. The less frustration the better. Keep your users happy. You simply don’t feel lost when using the site. The Trends button analyzes your data and presents it in an easy to read pie and bar chart. See where your money is going quickly without opening a help document.

Remember the experience does not have to end when the user leaves the site. Continuing past the web application, mint.com  sends emails (if you want them) to you when you are over budget or meet your goals. And for you iPhoners out there (love my iPhone), they have a great app that continues the experience wherever you are.

While this post may sound like an ad for mint.com it is really about the presentation of the experience and the process, which are so smooth that you can’t help but talk about the design and visual cues without talking about the features of the site. Whether you use the service of mint.com or not I recommend exploring their site. If you are a designer or a developer, it is truly a fantastic example of a well thought through application.

A note to mint.com’s CEO Aaron Patzer and his entire design and development team: Nice job! Why don’t you guys go ahead and take the week off.