The Biggest Bang For Your Buck
The other day a friend of mine asked me for some help with his e-commerce site. He was, as we all are, looking for better usability.
He was specifically asking about their left column filters and their “blue African masks.” I gave him a couple of solutions and then I added a few more bonus UX fixes.
For example, they had one of those awful discount pop-ups that overwhelms the screen and asks you for your email. Nobody likes those, not even for a discount. (For proven solutions, just ask me.)
The biggest mistake I see companies making right now is in UX. It has to be one of the largest (and most misunderstood) buzzwords/industries/cliches out there right now. Everybody wants to “invest” in UX, but few are willing to pay for good UX.
I see articles all the time by fellow UX-ers dredging up the same complaints about a lack of understanding by businesses, surrounding user experience. This article is a classic and sums up most of the complaints.
One of the primary reasons for my UX writing is to help get the word out that UX is not a magic wand. But it is a key to making any and every business grow, become more profitable, and please their customers/users.
If you come across this article, send it to your boss, your clients, etc. The result will lead to us (UX-ers) showing the value of our trade.
Which leads me to this question…
How valuable is user experience?
(spoiler alert: SUPER VALUABLE!)
Let me start with this thought from Google’s head of product design: “his (Osterloh and Google’s) benchmark isn’t sales (for the Pixel phone), it’s consumer satisfaction and user experience.”
Google’s primary focus isn’t on sales. It’s on something even bigger — user experience. Google knows what many companies hear and are starting to latch on to: a great UX leads to a great company.
This would seemingly be a no-brainer right? A company that focuses on delivering the best customer experience/satisfaction would be a popular and profitable business.
Yet we have businesses all over the globe who continually have sub-par user experiences, user interfaces, and customer focus. Getting back to our previous quote, if a multi-billion dollar mega corp’s primary focus is on UX…then you as a business owner, employee, consultant should take note.
But the objection may come up, “I need to prove that my investment in UX will pay off!”
ROI
Let’s start with the most famous, or should be, quote on UX ROI:
Every dollar spent on UX brings in between $2 and $100 dollars in return.
Every business person on earth can understand this statistic/quote. If I give you $1 dollar and you give me $2 dollars back, I will keep giving you money all day. If I give you $1 dollar and you give me $100 dollars back…you have just found your new best friend.
Based on that stat alone every business should stop what they’re doing and invest heavily into UX. Let me put it this way, you could get more profit out of your company without attracting more customers, simply by fixing your UX! (Oh and by the way, that improved UX led to greater word-of-mouth and attracted more customers.)
When 94% of a website user’s first impressions are design related…you don’t have time to mess around. Your credibility is inextricably linked to your UX and if you are putting $0 into your UX, you have no credibility.
Still not convinced?
Companies lose an average of $243 per customer due to poor usability. Now you’re just throwing money out the window! If your registration flow is even remotely difficult 45% of users will abandon ship. That’s close to half.
Speaking of half, 50% of a developers time is spent reworking usability issues that could have been avoided by employing a UX-er from the start. And the cost of finding these problems after deployment is 100x more expensive than if you would’ve invested in UX at the beginning.
You, business person, are throwing away and/or losing money on a daily basis by not investing in your user experience. You are losing credibility, customers, and money.
A New Hope.
Back to my original story…when my friend got my list of usability fixes he was flabbergasted. He loved them all and told me later, “I didn’t think you were going to be THAT good.” That’s the beauty of UX, the solutions appear to be simple. But it takes an expert to spot them AND fix them.
There’s still hope for you and your startup/business/product/app!
There are thousands of qualified UX consultants, employees and firms out there. (Full disclosure: I am one of those qualified UX-ers.) Together we can turn the ship around and start getting the biggest bang for your buck today.
You can get a 100x return on your site, product, app by investing in your user experience. It’s time to jump in and be on the leading edge, not the bleeding edge!
Thanks for taking the time to read and I am wishing you the best ROI on your UX!
