Xero has today unwrapped a new look to their Android app, Xero Touch, giving it a Material Design makeover.
Xero is an online accountancy software aimed at small business owners, with over 540,000 subscribers in 180 different countries, the service is quite popular. With that number of subscribers, the fact that their Android app has been downloaded over 470,000 times is a big milestone. It’s these Android users who have been essential to the re-design of their Android app, Xero’s Chief Product Officer Angus Norton said ‘We’ve included extensive feedback from our Xero Android users to ensure that it focuses on the tasks and details that are important to them’.
The push to update their Xero Touch app is driven by a large percentage of their user base using Android 5.0 or above. Xero says that ’60 percent of our Xero Android users are running Lollipop.’ now that’s incentive.
The update includes a lot of ‘Material Design’ elements, offering a simpler, more uniform layout, improved typography and spacing, but also comes with some delightful material design animations included to make it a ‘more beautiful experience’.
As well as looking more beautiful, the app also includes a number of functional updates. The ‘headline feature’ is their improved receipt entry, which finally arrives on Android. The receipt entry is now ‘optimised’ for the most common type of entry: Single line items, and the sometimes field has been moved into the overflow menu so you only get presented with fields you need.
Xero has improved the Invoice screen, to make it simpler and easier to use, all in line with Google’s Material Design guidelines.
It’s functional, it looks good, Xero’s Chief Marketing Officer Andy Lark says of the update
A superior user experience is at the heart of everything we do at Xero. Merging input from our customers with beautiful, thoughtful design, drives both our product innovation and our passion for supporting small businesses and our accounting partners who can start their day using Xero mobile solutions.
Xero isn’t finished though, they’re keen for more feedback, including feature requests and reviews, which you can deliver through their Xero Community. If you want to check out Xero, head over to Google Play and grab the app and see what it’s all about.
