How Do Startups Benefit from Proper UX Design

User experience (UX) is at the heart of every successful product — website, app, or service. It’s that secret sauce that makes us click the ‘Buy’ button or rave about this feature or that neat trick. You won’t see reviews about great user experience.

When it’s good, it’s so seamless and unnoticeable that your customers are happy without knowing why. But you’ll notice plenty of reviews complaining about poor UX, even if they are masked under ramblings of incomprehensible navigation or misplaced buttons.

However, good reviews aren’t the only reason startups should work with a professional Purrweb UI/UX design agency on building a user-centered product. And today, we’ll walk you through five major benefits any up-and-coming business will gain by applying UX best practices.

#1. Customer Loyalty and Brand Awareness

Seamless experience across all devices is important to 83% of survey respondents. Therefore, keeping all your online and media presence consistently smooth is crucial for brand recognition and customer loyalty.

Most online users abandon slow-to-load sites and clunky apps within a few seconds. So, they are vicious in their critical comments and feedback.

A site or app built with users’ needs and goals in mind will keep them engaged from the first second and guide them on their exploration of the pages and features.

Proper UX means that customers don’t need to bother with FAQ sections or live chats with support managers. Having experienced a smooth ride once, they will be happy to come back for more and bring friends along.

#2. Higher Conversion Rate and ROI

Proper UX design is a major contributing factor to your business growth. According to Forbes, Jeff Bezos focused on user experience and invested 100 times more in UX than advertising during his first 12 months with Amazon. We all know how well it paid off. And it’s not the only example of a successful company investing in user experience.

A well-thought-out user flow should grab the customer’s attention. It should unobtrusively walk them through the critical touchpoints of their journey all the way to the desired outcome.

It can be as simple as filling out a contact form or as straightforward as adding a product to the cart and checking out. The more natural and smooth this path is for your client, the more sales you will get, and the higher your UX investment’s return will be.

#3. Improved Search Rankings

Even if you’re willing to spend thousands on targeted ads, growing organic traffic should be among your business goals. Making it to the first page of Google search results can be a major factor in achieving this goal.

While no SEO expert knows for sure how search engines rank websites, Google gives us a few hints via usability guidelines. Many of these tips apply to mobile website performance, but most work for all types of digital products.

While there are plenty of factors affecting the SEO ranking of a website, some are directly tied to UX design. Bounce rate and average session time are among those. The former means people leave your site quickly. They simply don’t find what they are looking for or can’t deal with slow loading or incomprehensible navigation.

The length of an average session translates into how engaged visitors are to stay on the website for long minutes or hours. Keeping the bounce rate low and session duration high will make Google love your website. This will improve your chances of getting into the top-10 search results.

#4. Reduced Expenses

Building a minimum viable product (MVP) is a tried-and-true startup strategy for saving money and accelerating time to market. But it’s ultimately a feedback loop that tells founders where they need to take a product to make it profitable.

On the one hand, change is inevitable, as it’s one of the goals of building an MVP. On the other hand, adding a new feature is usually faster and cheaper than reworking the whole user flow from the ground up because customers can’t make sense of the controls.

Moreover, starting a development process with a UX design in mind keeps all team members on the same page. They work with the same understanding of users’ needs. This approach prevents miscommunication, scope creep, and endless missed deadlines. This keeps expenses in check.

#5. Better Funding Prospects

Investors go through thousands of pitches every year. Grabbing their attention is tricky unless your project has something to set it apart from the competition. Quality UX research and design can turn into a competitive differentiator, as user-centered design becomes paramount to success.

VC firms have been seeking out UX designers for years to capitalize on this trend. Having a professional with an in-depth understanding of user personas, user flows, and usability trends, helps investors identify startups with the most potential. And yours can be among the lucky few if you don’t skip the UX design stage at the onset of the project.

Proper user experience design can’t save a startup from failure if there’s no market need or the competition is too high. However, high-quality UX design is among the most versatile instruments in your toolkit when used right.

It can build brand awareness, breed customer loyalty, increase the number of sales, and make Google and investors love your product. Spending time and resources on user research, UX planning, and design will pay off tenfold in reduced expenses and increased revenue down the road.