During a down economy consumers become more conservative with their spending. In turn, companies often need to make difficult decisions to weather the storm, including limiting spending on projects, saving money, and reducing their workforce – resulting in a workforce that needs to do more with less.
In this leaner corporate environment, one might ask, “why should we spend money on UX?” Well, here are a few of the many reasons why investing in UX gives you a leg up during an unpredictable economy.
UX research saves you time and money
UX helps reduce development costs. Implementing UX research and design practices early in the development cycle helps you identify issues, user needs, and pain points when changes are easier and cheaper to execute.
Solid UX reduces the need for costly reworks post-launch and decreases the likelihood of product development failures. The impact of a product “flop” is particularly harrowing during an uncertain economic environment.
Not having to rework also shortens development time, meaning you’re getting to the market sooner with a more successful product.
Good UX leads to products that are easier to use and troubleshoot, which helps reduce support call volume and improves self-service – saving time and resources. Reducing call center volume, even by a small percentage, has exponential savings across all agents in all locations.
Better user interfaces mean less errors. When it comes to back-end applications or supply chain management, especially for global systems, errors can result in millions of dollars lost. Our client, one of the largest fast–food chains in the world, shared with us that our research and design recommendations for their supply management application impacted thousands of transactions daily, saving the company millions by fixing a poorly designed UI.
Keeping loyal customers is less expensive than winning new customers, and only one bad experience can be enough to drive users away. Meanwhile, positive user experiences can be lucrative by inspiring customers to remain loyal and even become brand champions.
UX research gives you a competitive advantage
Using a variety of methods across the development cycle, UX research helps you understand your end users – rather than make assumptions about them. This helps you create a product that has real value for your customers.
UX research can help you identify the right track strategically by getting input from users early on. This can help ensure money is being invested in the right projects and that products will be successful.
Happy customers are your best salespeople. Positive user experiences help you stand out from the competition, improve word-of-mouth marketing, and increase customer retention and loyalty – all of which are particularly important when consumers are spending conservatively.
Strong UX practices boost team morale and project speed by creating alignment across and within teams. UX practices result in strong and successful products the team can be proud of.
UX research doesn’t have to be a huge investment. There are quick and low-cost ways of gathering user feedback. For example, a small one-day study with just five or six one-on-one interviews can often be sufficient to identify most of the usability issues with a product or interface.
UX research and design helps organizations make data-backed, business-driven decisions, bringing clarity and confidence in an unpredictable economic environment. By including end-users in the development process, you can not only survive these uncertain times but thrive.