How a UX designer can help your business
“Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works” – Steve Jobs.
These lines from Steve Jobs ring true because most business owners spend far too much time thinking about the look of a product. To make their product visually appealing, these owners overlook the importance of the product’s functionality and performance.
Though a visually appealing design attracts customers, poor functionality and performance make them look for your competitors.
That’s why companies today rely heavily on user experience or UX designers.
With every $1 invested in UX design providing a return of $100, and an ROI of 9,900%, talented UX designers form the essential pillars of every brand’s online presence.
Good UX designers not only create designs that attract users but have the potential to increase conversation and generate value for the business.
But first things first.
Who are UX designers?
UX designers are professionals responsible for monitoring the user experience of digital products, identifying areas of improvement, and improving digital offerings to ensure they’re user-friendly.
They manage interactive features, usability, visual elements, information architecture, and the interface between the people and the software product or website.
These professionals help develop usable products while ensuring usability, functionality, and performance. While these professionals might have many responsibilities, they focus on user research, designing wireframes, developing personas, and testing designs.
As a business owner, you might prefer UX designers with a bachelor’s degree in computer design, computer development, and related areas. Hiring designers who study UX foundation courses can be a valuable addition to your design team.
These foundation courses help these professionals learn the fundamentals of UX and give hands-on experience in enhancing user experience.
How a UX designer can help your business
Here are a few ways in which a UX designer helps your business:
1. Creates various user personas
After getting the hang of the market and the target audience, these UX designers create user profiles based on various aspects, including pain points, behavior, goals, and motivation.
These personas help UX designers understand users’ perspectives before purchasing.
Using user personas, a UX designer enhances product development, ensures customization, and improves service quality.
As the value proposition increases, you rope in new customers, giving your business the start you always wanted.
2. Builds wireframes
One of the job duties of a UX designer is building wireframes for mobile apps, websites, and digital products.
The wireframe is a two-dimensional or 2-D skeletal outline of your mobile app or digital product.
A wireframe includes just the product’s functionality and doesn’t consider the aesthetic visual elements.
Typically, a wireframe is a 2-D map of a house with the furnishing and paint details.
Building a wireframe is essential because it forms the building blocks of UX design. This final design is a crucial aspect of your business’s online presence.
To build such structures, a UX designer requires an in-depth and comprehensive understanding of your business to develop the structure.
As a result, hiring these professionals from the early stages is essential.
3. Creates prototypes
Even with the wireframe, it becomes challenging to imagine and picturesque how the car model might look upon completion.
That’s where UX designers come into the picture. These designers create prototypes, which are mock-ups of your final product.
Apart from giving you a visual feel to the users, prototyping helps in user testing and identifying potential bugs. Many UX designers use it to test your content and highlight potential gaps. It also provides an accurate cost estimate to complete any project.
Prototyping is one feature that helps in creating a worthwhile product catering to the customer’s requirements.
4. Works as managers
The best managers in a team are process-oriented people, and they regularly follow blogs, communicate with thought leaders, and conduct meet-ups with fellow designers.
Apart from mastering the design work, these professionals know how that design helps the company achieve its objectives.
This makes them better managers because apart from guiding the team in completing their work, they speak confidently with stakeholders across different departments to explain the design work.
People passionate about UX design are always ready to pursue improvements.
Using their knowledge, these designers improve business processes and help other designers take one step toward leadership responsibilities.
5. Facilitates usability testing
Because you’re not the users, getting your products tested by people who might give an unbiased opinion is essential.
So, as UX designers develop a website’s UX, they conduct usability testing at every development stage.
The usability tests identify and solve any ease-of-use issues that crop up and play a vital role in ensuring that the final user experience is more conducive and valuable.
Usability testing is possible only if the UX designer is present.
6. Collaborates with other departments
A UX designer collaborates with other departments to develop and finalize product design improvements.
They might coordinate with development and design teams to create product page designs with navigation features and intuitive routing.
This collaboration ensures software products are according to the customer’s requirements.
7. Establishes brand memorability and visibility
Whether it’s Facebook’s legendary like button or Paypal using the simplicity rule on their interface to allow users to make and accept payments, some of the most iconic and valuable brand elements are because of UX designers.
Customers no longer get attracted only to the aesthetic appeal or visual elements.
73% of customers base their purchase decisions on their experience, which results from the user experience.
Today, businesses that focus on design thinking make a mark on their branding rather than companies relying on corporate business tactics to provide a seamless UX experience.
As these designers foster brand recognition by providing a seamless user experience, it greatly impacts the company’s brand memorability and visibility.
Without a UX designer, Facebook would have been unable to create its legendary-like button.
That’s the brand recognition, and visibility UX designers provide to your business.
8. Prevents you from wasting resources
By investing in a UX designer, companies might save time, money, and human resources.
Human resources involve all other people involved in product development.
When other employees feel happy about their work culture and job duties, it prevents the company from facing financial losses.
A UX designer’s presence prevents resource misuse because rather than spending the budget on hiring a sales and marketing manager, these designers encourage a company to focus on UX design.
For instance, a company might hire leading marketers to attract more customers to their digital products. But, if they don’t invest in user experience, the product is likely to fall below the marketing standards, which might prevent buyers from buying or downloading it.
When your product has a user-friendly UX design, it directly impacts your conversion rates and increases the return on investment (ROI).
9. Breaks down the barrier between physical and digital products
Most businesses prefer providing a cross-channel user experience, targeting both digital and physical stores. The aim here is to deliver a satisfying purchasing experience to customers.
One company that mastered the art of breaking down the barrier between physical and digital products is Apple. Even though customers purchase Apple products from a physical store, the company designs its stores to provide a seamless customer experience.
Even the unboxing experience provided by Apple is far superior to others. Apple phones are a status symbol and are synonymous with excellent design, durability, and finish.
Their user experience is the best in the tech industry. Even today, you will find people lined up outside the store hours before a new Apple phone launches.
That’s the power of UX design, as it makes these designers an integral part of your design team.
A memorable user experience is just a UX designer away
While no one can predict your users’ exact requirements, UX designers help you identify them to a great extent.
Hiring an experienced UX designer allows you to identify problems and potential market opportunities early in the design and development phase.
In this information age, UX design and UX designer’s relevance is growing with each passing day.
Businesses focusing on improving user experience invest in UX designers as these professionals can handle the entire design-thinking process.
As customers remember their experiences with a brand, the role of a UX designer is paramount and helps generate significant monetary value.
Though you might be apprehensive about hiring UX designers, the value they generate is far more than tangible.
A dedicated UX designer helps you anticipate customer requirements and design customer-focused digital products.
Author’s bio
Priya Jain has been copywriting professionally for over eight years. She has attained an engineering degree and an MBA. She teaches math, spends her time running behind her toddler, and tries new recipes while she isn’t writing. You can find her on LinkedIn.
