How Good UX Designers Can Rescue Your Startup

Any startup needs to have a seamless online presence, regardless of the product or service they are trying to sell. As the startup owner, you will conduct most of your business online as well as showcase your project to potential investors and customers through digital means. A thoughtful and well-designed digital presence is essential to developing your business. 

Customers who use digital products consider an optimized and flawless user experience as a basic requirement, so in order to stack up against the competition, it is not optional to meet these expectations. However, due to budget constraints and the many-layered complexities of managing a startup, entrepreneurs often overlook and undervalue the importance of UX design. In doing this, startups are actually going down a dangerous path and making detrimental mistakes.

A perfect example is a poorly designed app UX that features confusing navigation, lacks an intuitive interface, and has too many features that don’t further the goal of the product. These all can confuse and frustrate the user quickly and result in the app being put directly into the trash.

In other words, overlooking UX and feeling like a design is just “good enough” is never going to fly with a very savvy customer base who knows what they want and competitors willing to give that to them. You must ensure that your digital product makes a good first impression and delivers true value. 

Let’s take a look at some of the biggest mistakes startup founders are making to determine the real reasons why compromising on UX is detrimental to the success of your business, and subsequently why increasing your investment in UX can rescue your startup from disaster. 

Startup Failures and Poor UX

As it applies to startups who utilize digital products, apps, interfaces, and tools for online business management, a poor UX is not always obvious until it's too late. 

A lot of startups do not have significant funding and so in order to save on costs will hire a graphic designer to work on their UX thinking this is sufficient. However, a graphic designer, although highly necessary for web design success, is not as adept as a designer who specializes in UX to perform those tasks.

According to statistics, 90% of startups fail within the first several months. But don’t be alarmed, while this is a large number, the reasons for this are easily identifiable and have actionable solutions to ensure a greater chance of success. 

According to Statista, one of the biggest reasons why startups fail is due to an inability to generate a market need for their product. Unfortunately, many entrepreneurs may feel like they have a brilliant idea, but if they do not have the market needed to garner the interest, no one will want it.

Even if you are good at marketing, and creating a product within a good market, if there are no customers to buy it, then the chances of its success are very slim. 

In this case, even having a brilliant graphic designer won’t help you with generating a market need for the product, it is your job as a founder to ensure the product you are putting out there is a viable candidate. In doing this you will study what other products and solutions are already on the market, competitors or otherwise, in order to find out what unique challenges you can help solve with your great idea. 

In this initial market research, it is important to also study the behavior patterns of potential customers to make sure that the design is aligned with what interests the customers to keep them engaged and happy for as long as possible. 

Every step of the process should keep the user in mind, and once you are able to pass off the next phase of the product to the UX designer they should be continuing in this thought process. The overall design and goals will contain messages that reach the target audience and invite them to engage.

UX Designers Save The Day

UX defines how a user will feel about their first experience with your platform or product, so how can you ensure that the user is not only satisfied but finds value and a positive overall experience? The process of using the product improves the customer's digital experience.

There is a huge difference between a workable, usable, satisfying experience, and an improved, inspired, essential experience.

Consider the apps that have changed the way we use and interact with businesses, Uber, Doordash, Netflix, Spotify, they have all taken the user experience to a level that changes the game and makes users feel as if their lives have been improved because of the use of these apps. 

Ways that a UX designer can improve the digital experience:

1. Study customer profiles
2. Create a user journey
3. Implement creative design knowledge
4. Highlight responsive design
5. Utilize real customer feedback
6. Use A/B testing for every aspect of the project
7. Keep it simple

It is also important to incorporate digital branding in UX design, where both amplify and uplift one another to make the product as a whole stronger and more captivating. 

The tricky part in all of this is to include every part of these very necessary attributes while also maintaining an "ease of use" that is almost intuitive to the user while keeping your backend organized and efficient. The answer to that, keep it simple. Instead of a user taking 4 steps to get from “a” to “b” try to minimize the design and find solutions with fewer steps yet enhanced feedback and satisfaction. This includes design, storytelling, branding, be efficient and inspired, while also holding your customer's attention.

When building a brand, an online product, an app, or a service, prioritizing UX design is not only a good idea but an essential part of your business strategy. Good UX can save your business from failing by helping you implement a design that will surpass the competition and avoid common pitfalls. And a good UX designer is going to help you, as a founder, solidify your idea in productive and profitable ways.

Steve Jobs could implement all of the latest technology into his computers and products, but it was not until his unique, elevated, and simple designs that he superseded the competition by leaps and bounds, to this day making Apple one of the most popular brands in the world.