Xero. Billed as the world’s easiest accounting system, the site is also a study of what can be achieved with enough time and skill, and the right people.
Xero
The company is very impressive with their passionate pursuit of doing exactly what their customers need and want, with almost no limit to the ends of perfection in their execution. We should admire, and try to imitate, their design and development process in producing this merger of business tool and user experience.
Great things Xero have done:
• They released early and release often. Releasing the site early to users has allowed Xero to receive feedback and make rapid changes to their plans.
• They are making full use of all communication channels to promote and support their business.
• Much like Google and TradeMe, their first thought in everything they do is for their site users. This can be contrasted with sites like Yahoo and MSN where generally their first thoughts are for their advertisers and partners.
• It’s interesting to note the number of times Xero uses the word “you” or “your” (rather than “we” and “our”) compared to their competitors or other B2B websites.
• They blog, they Tweet, they comment and they contribute to other’s blogs and discussions. They have a conversation with their customers rather than talk at them.
• They ‘walk the talk’ by providing a simple, elegant and responsive user experience – much like their product – practicing the usability mantra of removing as many elements as possible from interface design.
This sort of elegant and overwhelmingly usable product and user experience design suits the New Zealand mindset. We’ve always been good at making things work and in the last 20 years we’ve realised our creativity is world class. All we need now is to trust ourselves and produce more like this.
Author: Tony Gardner, Saatchi & Saatchi DGS
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