How could Xero improve the homepage?

@Michael_Filgate - you are not supposed to have realised that for another 7 months. It has been part of the master plan all along /s

Step one
- Identify a market with greedy giants

Step Two
- Do the 60% of what the giants do but much cheaper. Yes there are lots of holes, and some of those holes drive users up the wall, but hey it does 60% and we are way cheaper.
- market yourself as the plucky underdog

StepThree
- Keep playing the plucky underdog
- get lead generating partners (accounting practices) on board and have them push the product onto their customers - did we mention we are the cheeky underdog?
- gradually add in another 20% of what the giants do, some of it poorly or half baked.
- Make it really easy and cheap for independent developers to fill in some of the 20% that we aren't doing or the stuff that we just suck at (e.g.inventory)

Step 4
- We have a big enough market now so more cash coming in
- Put up the prices
- Turn off the free stuff (Expenses) and make it a paid option
- Customers whinge. Change our mind (for a bit until the noise dies down)
- Hey we are the plucky underdog, we can all make mistakes, sorry, we will listen harder (no, honestly we will)
- Repeat a few times, make other poorly thought out changes (e.g. white space which (eventually) gets reversed with compact mode),

Step 5
- Engineers and experienced small business accountants not in charge, marketing and private finance is
- We have *** people hitting a home page every day - that must be valuable, right?, what if… we got kickbacks from payment processors? - sure it won’t be an appropriate solution for many of our customers, but we will get a percentage. Let’s nag them on the Home Screen and put a permanent reminder on the payments screen.
- Jack up the prices again
- Customers are whinging, let’s rearrange the pricing structure, that will confuse them - oh and throw in some stuff that most of them won't use (e.g UK Payroll) that will cost us nothing and make it seem like we are adding value.
- Customers continue to whinge - rearrange deck chairs to make it like we are doing something, because playing with the UI is much more valuable (and cheaper) than fixing issues like reports being back to front. Add a half baked AI that is worse than useless

Step 6
- realise that we are no longer the ‘plucky upstart’ but the greedy giant and EMBRACE IT.
- cut the legs out from under the independent developers who helped us grow
- jack up the prices again.

Step 7
- True Enshitification begins
- Employ community moderators to mollify the masses - The official response on this thread says (paraphrased) we will gather feedback but Ha Ha no chance - we know that no-one likes adverts or having unsuitable stuff thrust down their throats repeatedly but WE DON’T CARE - where else are you going to go any way!

Step 8
- We recognise that our prices are too high, but ‘good news’…
…Introduce a ‘cheaper’ ad supported version

Step 9
- A cheeky upstart sees a market with greedy giants…

Xero it is not too late (not that the Board Room will see this post (or, I suspect, care even if they saw it))

1. Respect the actual users and their day to day experiences.
2. Focus 80% of your development efforts on a) fixing things that make it easier for actual users to do their job and b) that open up closed markets to increase the subscriber base (for example, your dire user access/visibility/security rules you out of many businesses),
3. For the 20% of developer time play with the UI and new functionality - but have three public strands for people willing to help develop products (bleeding edge, needs polishing, final checks before wide release).
4. Publish a roadmap (especially for the stuff that needs to be fixed)
5. Don’t enshitify the offering any further - the plucky upstart succeeded because it (generally) enabled business owners and accountants to manage their finances and it treated them with respect. As soon as the culture (led from the top) began to think of users as just a source of revenue, trust is lost and the rot sets in.

Non-removable adverts for products and services that are inappropriate for an Organisation are a symptom of a company that doesn’t care - the official response at the head of this thread says it all - “I want to be upfront that this isn't something we have plans to remove atm” Thank you for your honesty Kelly.

While I hope that Xero fixes the rot before it spreads too far - I suspect it is too late.

Anyone want to place a bet on when the ‘Official Advert supported tier arrives’?

Oh, now I get it. This is warming up to the offer to pay an extra $20/month to remove ads.

+1. The dashboard is already lame, now the top 30% is covered with an advertisement for a feature I don't want "access analytics powered by swyft".

Unlike the other widgets, this ad cannot be turned off, or marked as read. It occupies the most visually important part of the homepage. I'm paying for the app, I shouldn't have ads for features shoved down my throat every time I open the app.

I'm rapidly reaching the conclusion that Xero is driven purely by marketing, with no heed for making the basic functions robust and accessible.

"This is something we'll start to get a sense of the feeling around from community here"

Maybe this is something you should've done BEFORE unilaterally changing the dashboard...

Get rid of the advertising. This is totally the enshitification of the product personified.

Online payments, receipt processing apps etc are totally unsuitable for my business - and never will be.

Please have a setting somewhere that permanently hides the adverts for stuff that is totally useless to me and just annoys me when it pops up AGAIN and has to be dismissed AGAIN!