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Is beauty only skin deep?

I have just exchanged emails with one of the directors of an online accounting vendor who effectively told me that Xero was a better looking application, but that his company's offering had more functionality. He also stated that his people were working hard to improve their user-interface and that he knew the guys at Xero were working hard to add functionality.

So, that got me to thinking - do the users of online accounting applications sign-up based on how great the application looks or on how many features it has? (and for this purpose we need to accept that ease of use is part of being "good looking"). Is beauty only skin deep?

My accountancy practice bought into the online accounting concept relatively early and initially went for Twinfield - which we saw as the most powerful system, with the most heavy duty functionality. However, ultimately, we switched to Xero because our people found the learning curve too steep and the user-interface a challenge. I must say however that Twinfield is a great product, it just wasn't for us.

The well-respected web software company 37Signals have this as their philosophy:

"We believe most software is too complex. Too many features, too many promises. Instead, we build simpler web-based software with elegant interfaces and thoughtful features you’ll actually use."

Looking at 37Signals user forums it seems that they stick to their guns and refuse to add features that they don't think are necessary.

Whether, for web software, beauty is skin deep must be a crucial issue for all of the online accounting vendors, and probably for all other cloud application vendors too. Assuming that Xero and my email correspondent's company are each following their own well thought out strategy and business plan, then it seems Xero believe that users will fall for a sexy application with an easy going personality. The other company believe that it's what is "under the skin" that counts most.

Can they both be right? Is this a great example of the free market at work, with users able to choose from competing services based on what is important to them, or will getting the rules of this particular dating game wrong have a profound effect on at least the speed of growth for a vendor, and maybe its ultimate success or failure? As ever, only time will tell.

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Comment by Amanda Ellis on September 21, 2009 at 19:42: Beauty is important and so is functionality. Xero wins at both. Part of Xero's beauty is its simplicity of design. Clicking that OK button to reconcile a line-item on a bank account is a beautiful thing. By making this process so easy, the design becomes more beautiful as it represents something special for the user: confidence. Confidence that they know what they're doing. Confidence that they made the right choice to switch to Xero, and confidence that they're becoming more expert at their accounting tasks.

Comment by Paul Burton on September 14, 2009 at 18:24: In order for any application to be successful, beauty and function have to go hand-in-hand.

Having switched over from MYOB, I cannot put too fine a point on how important the concepts of "simple" and "useable" were in making my decision to switch to Xero.

Poor design and lousy usability is unforgivable given the tools these companies have at their disposal. It's very costly to correct poor design and planning after a foundation has been built. Xero should be given a lot of credit for understanding this fundamental truth.

Comment by Stuart Jones on September 10, 2009 at 14:22: Damn! Very impressed Adrian. There aren't many of us left.

Comment by Adrian Pearson on September 10, 2009 at 14:13: Hi Stuart, I can't reveal the source, if I did that kind of thing nobody would speak to me!