Intro
Good looks won’t help if your customers can’t use your product.
UI/UX design plays a key role in the success of your app or website and ups your business profitability, but it’s not the only one. Let’s uncover where every cent invested in good UI/UX design pays off, and look at real-life examples that back this theory.
Enhanced customer engagement and satisfaction
Feature — what most companies rush to develop and promote — is about what your user can do with your product. UI/UX is about how they do it. And you can’t really get your users to stick around (or choose you over the competitors) if this how is difficult.
There are many company stories highlighting how changes to a product’s UI/UX had a dramatic effect on customer engagement, good and bad.
Take JobNimbus, an all-in-one project management solution for building contractors. In 2020, the app was struggling with a 2.5-star review rating on the App Store and a high customer churn. The developers working at JobNimbus decided to redesign their app to meet the needs of less tech-savvy users. After the shift to a new, more swift UI/UX, average app ratings jumped to 4.8 stars, and the app became a top three retention reason for customers.
Another noteworthy case is Microsoft’s legendary decision to change the light blue color of the links on an early version of Bing to a darker shade. The change is estimated to have brought Microsoft an extra $80 million in revenue from advertising and increased user engagement — a great example of how investing in UI/UX can bring handsome returns with small, yet precise changes.
Enhanced efficiency and productivity
How many times have you struggled with an app with a complicated user flow? Or an online store that takes you through pages to complete one simple purchase? These are examples of a bad UI/UX or simply an absence of one. Good UI/UX doesn’t just feel good to users; it gets them to where they want to be faster.
Small buttons, unreadable fonts, and dropdown lists with limited options are just some examples of poor design that lead to bottlenecks. These force customers to contact support agents to clarify or fix issues, leading to lost time and increased costs. Worst case scenario, shoppers simply abandon a product or website. Take a look at this real-life case study.
In 2009, a team of UX designers discovered that mandatory sign-in/up at the checkout stage for one of their clients was forcing customers to abandon their shopping carts. Users didn’t remember their passwords, and getting a password reminder was too much work for most of them.
As a result, the system was overloaded by 160,000 password change requests per day, and 45% of customers creating multiple accounts. Moreover, 75% of shoppers never tried to complete the purchase after requesting a password.
Removing the signing-in/up step — a simple UI/UX fix — led to a 45% increase in the number of purchasing customers and a $300 million increase in revenue in the first year.
Still not convinced this is the right investment?
Improved brand reputation
High-quality, memorable design is a must for any company that cares about its reputation and credibility. What would you think if your developer’s website had confusing navigation? Or an online vendor’s payment page had broken images?
What if we asked you to imagine the Airbnb website or Spotify app? You could probably see their branding and app in your head and associate them with quality services, of course, depending on your personal experience.
Speaking of Airbnb, they’re an excellent example of how quality design can strengthen a company’s reputation. Twice, in fact.
In 2014, Airbnb redesigned its site, focusing on things such as ease of use, brand values, and the image it presented of accommodation. In practice, this resulted in the brand’s new signature red and white colors, detailed reviews that rate different aspects of a stay, and high-quality photos of accommodation. Eventually, the company managed to overcome its main barrier — a stranger-danger prejudice — and became one of the most popular services for booking accommodation.
In 2022, Airbnb completed a second redesign. This time, they focused on improving the customer experience by giving browsers a choice of activity. The new interface asks you questions to choose the best option for your stay. For example, if you want to enjoy wine tasting in France, Airbnb shows the best château in Bordeaux.
This second redesign strengthened Airbnb’s reputation as a company offering the best travel experience at an affordable price.
Competitive advantage
Since not everyone understands the benefits of investing in UI/UX, great UI/UX design can be a competitive advantage and even put you in the spotlight.
This happened to one of our clients, CR2 — a fintech company that delivers omnichannel banking software and solutions. After modernizing the platform’s legacy code and adding new features, Ralabs created an advanced mobile app with a customizable design that works perfectly on different operating systems and devices.
With the update, each bank using CR2’s app could enable just the features they need and enjoy seamless performance across different devices. This customization feature gave CR2 a competitive edge and earned them an award in The Global Edition of Celent’s Report 2020.
Lower development costs
“For every dollar spent to resolve a problem during product design, $10 would be spent on the same problem during development and $100 or more if the problem had to be solved after the product’s release.” — Robert Pressman, Software Engineering: A Practitioner’s Approach.
As Robert Pressman suggests, addressing design problems early on is way cheaper than trying to cut corners and deal with them later on.
This translates to investing in early-stage design tasks such as user research, information architecture design, wireframing, prototyping, and user testing. By skipping these things, you’ll only spend much more on fixing mistakes later or will have to start everything from scratch.
Unfortunately, we’ve seen such cases: despite our strong suggestion, one of our clients decided to cut corners on UI/UX design and as a result – paid twice as much for the development.
The story is pretty simple: after our estimate for developing an accounting app seemed too expensive for the client, they turned to another vendor, who agreed to skip user research and a few other early stages.
After six months of development, the client realized the app was targeting the wrong category of users and would have to be rewritten from scratch. The client had to pay twice, but fortunately, they avoided the worst-case scenario – ruining user experience after an app’s launch. This could cost the company not only money, but it’s reputation.
Increased profit
Great UI/UX design helps you retain your current customers, win new business, improve efficiency, and save on development costs down the line. In other words, it makes good business sense. All this is clear, but there’s one more critical advantage: how UI/UX directly affects your bottom line.
Spoiler alert: small details can have huge consequences.
In 2017, the John S McCain destroyer lost control and collided with a Liberian tanker… all because of a poorly designed checkbox. The checkbox locked right and left thrust sliders that adjust the speed of the propellers controlled by different motors. The box was unchecked during the accident and so hard to find that the crew were unable to control the propellers and turn the ship around in time.
The ship’s repairs cost $223 million — probably one of the most expensive results of poor design thinking.
UI/UX development is worth every cent
If you have the choice between investing money in UI/UX design or some interesting but less essential feature or marketing effort, it makes sense to choose design.
Years of experience creating top products for Ralabs clients have only reinforced the points we’ve covered here:
- Proper UI/UX design, from user research to prototyping and user testing, guarantees your client the best experience, leading to high customer satisfaction and retention rates.
- Even the smallest details of design, like colors and button sizes, can influence a product’s success and profit, so they should be carefully researched and selected by experienced designers.
- A unique, well-thought-out design can become your competitive advantage and strengthen your brand image.
- You can’t avoid UI/UX design costs, so make these expenses work for you. By trying to do UI/UX design on the cheap, you risk making mistakes that will eventually force you to spend more to fix them or lead to product failure.
Smart UI/UX investments have high ROI, and you don’t need to be concerned about their efficiency if you choose a reliable vendor with expertise.
At Ralabs, we’ve completed over 80 successful projects and have top ratings on Clutch and DesignRush to show for them. Check out our values and work to see if we click, or jump in and say hi to start discussing your project.
