When Should Startups Prioritize UX Design?

Founders and entrepreneurs are very familiar with the difficulties of building a successful product. According to Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen, 95% of new products fail. Combine this with the fact that almost 20% of new businesses fail within the first year and we have a pretty good case for a solid product strategy.

But even good products with great product strategies often fail to reach a large audience or build a sustainable user base. One of the oft-cited reasons for this is poor user experience or UX. In many instances, startups focus on adding new features in the beginning and don’t consider UX until the very end — often like a nice-to-have feature. They are often afraid to focus on the UX too early in product development. In this article, we attempt to give a definite answer on when startups should focus on their UX. But first, let’s define UX and why it is important for startups and small businesses.

What is UX Design? Understanding the Difference Between UI and UX

In the most simple terms, UX design or user experience design is the process of ensuring a smooth, easy, and intuitive experience for a user. The goal of UX design is to offer the best experience to a user at every step of their journey.

UX or user experience is how someone interacts with a product and how it feels to them. This comes down to its features, the value the product offers them, how easily they can access the features, its overall look and feel, and how enjoyable it is. Even the ease of learning to use a product or a solution plays into the overall UX.

UI vs UX 

While the UI or the user interface plays a huge role in the user experience, designing the UI and the UX are not the same. They are very different and distinct aspects of product development. For instance, if we’re designing a desk, the color scheme, shape, and where the different drawers are placed, among other aspects, determine the user interface. On the other hand, how it feels to touch, if it’s easy and comfortable to work for long hours, if it’s easy to reach across the table, if the drawers are easy to open and close, and similar aspects would determine the user experience.

UI design:

• How a product looks
• Ensuring consistent design language
• Making sure the appearance is aligned with the brand identity

UX design: 

• How a product feels
• Ensuring users can perform actions with minimum friction
• Making sure that users can quickly figure out how to do what they want to do

When it comes to a website or a mobile app, the color palette, the design theme, and where the different buttons are placed will define the UI. The website speed, ease of hitting the different buttons, and how easy it is to do different actions on the app will determine the UX.

Importance of UX Design for Startups

UX design for startups needs skilled and experienced designers since their success often hinges on user experience. Even if there is huge competition in the market and many similar products, startups can differentiate their products with great UX. Investing in UX will also ensure that the startups are developing a product that users need and would love to use. 

On the other hand, poor UX can break a startup. Even if a product offers a lot of value for its users, if it’s too slow, has a steep learning curve, or is not accessible, it will lose its user base and will cost the startup. 

Why UX Design is Crucial for Startups: Benefits for Growth and Retention 

UX design is a crucial element of product design. Here’s why startups should invest in UX design for their products:

Fast user growth and adoption

One of the crucial factors that determine product success is how fast you can build a user base and how quickly the users make it part of their daily workflow. As you can imagine, UX plays a huge role here.

Keep in mind that a great UX is defined by the value it provides to the user. If your audience finds good value in your solution and they can learn and use it easily, your user base will grow quickly.

Improved user retention

It’s not enough that the users join your platform or adopt your product initially, it’s also crucial that you’re able to retain them. Even if your app promises to solve their pain points, users will leave the app if they can’t use it easily. If the app takes too long to load or produce results, users may explore other options or migrate to another app.

By investing in UX, startups and businesses can keep their user base on their platform. When users have a great experience, they won’t even see any need to explore other options.

Less demand for customer support

Users contact customer support when they’re not able to figure out a product by themselves. If they can’t access a specific feature or if they’re stuck at a point, they will reach out to customer support for answers. So if the product has a poor UX, the organization will have to invest in a larger customer support team.

But, by building a product with a good understanding of the user base and their pain points, the organization can offer a smooth experience to the user.

Contacting customer support is often the last resort for customers; so if the product can help the user figure out the answers by themselves, it can significantly reduce the need for customer support. A great UX can also allow the organization to reduce its investment in developing training materials and user guides.

Better ROI for the end-user

Customers invest in a product when there’s a justifiable ROI for them. This ROI may come from the reduced time they spend on a specific task or the number of people needed for a specific task. It could even be in the form of an app reducing the cognitive load for a user and helping them focus on the task.

When an app has a great UX, users can focus on getting the results instead of trying to learn how it works or waiting for the app to respond. A great UX will allow users to accelerate their workflow and be more productive.

Improves brand perception

An organization’s products reflect its standards and quality control. When a product has a great UX, it doesn’t just affect how the users feel about it, but rather about the entire brand. Users will associate the brand with a good experience, ease of use, and great value. It will make customers more inclined to try other products and solutions from the brand.

Improved ranking in search results (for websites)

Search engines want to offer users the best experience and take this into account when ranking websites for search results. If your web app takes too long to load, if it’s not mobile friendly, or if the images don’t have alt text, search engines may push your website or product down the search results.

This can impact your user acquisition rates.

Gives your business a competitive edge

Even if your product offers the same features as your competitors, you can still stay ahead of the game with a great UX. A great UX offers more value and ROI to the user for the same price. In other words, your UX strategy is imperative to your product’s success.

“An effective UX strategy relies on aligning a business’ goals with the needs of its users. Without those two fundamental pillars in alignment, you risk designing a solution that users don’t value or creating an unsustainable, unprofitable product.” – Kelli Lucas, President, Chief Design Officer, and co-founder at LunarLab

When Should Startups Focus on UX Design? Best Practices for Early-Stage Product Development 

The hard-to-swallow answer to the question is that the UX design should begin before you create the initial wireframe.

For a great user experience, you need to understand your audience well. Your team needs a clear picture of what troubles them, what their pain points are, and what will provide value to them. To get this, you have to invest in user research. This research should drive your design process from the ground up — from the features users will need to how they’re implemented.

Throughout the product journey, you’ll have to work on the UX. But if you don’t place enough importance in the beginning and later attempt to improve the UX, you’ll be severely limited in what you can do.

Without a solid UX, you’ll also struggle to get users for your solution. When checking out a completely new product, users rarely spend a lot of time. Once you’ve gained a sufficient audience and you have good reviews, users may be a bit more patient to find value in it. But initially, if it doesn’t work as easily as they expected, they’ll leave. And odds are they won’t come back.

As experienced product owners will tell you, changes are more expensive down the line when building a product. This should also be a further incentive to start working on the UX earlier in the product lifecycle. 

Best Practices for UX Implementation at Early-stage Product Development

• Invest early in UX
• Understand the user — what they like, how much they know, their technical knowledge, and what they would want from the product
• Invest in accessibility. Accessibility enhances the overall user experience
• Start user testing early in the product development
• Invest in user onboarding. Users should be able to quickly figure out how to use a product, particularly for new products. 

Steps to Building a Strong UX Strategy for Your Startup

Startups need a strong UX strategy to be successful. It plays a crucial role in acquiring users and generating revenue from them. Here’s how startups can build a successful UX strategy: 

1. Research. Research. Research

For any startup, the first step to building a UX strategy must be research. The team should work on understanding the users, their pain points, their preferences, how they’re currently solving their pain points, and their expectations from a new solution. Researching the competition and its users can help you better define your product, differentiate it from the rest, and offer a strong value proposition for potential users. It’s also important to work with all the stakeholders to understand their expectations of the solution and define business goals. 

2. Define your product vision

Once you understand the users’ pain points and the business goals, the next step is to define your vision for the product or solution. This definition is less about the features and more about the pain points you’re solving and the business goals you want to achieve. 

3. Define your goals

Defining the goals will help the team understand their progress and how close they are to the product vision. It will help the team make decisions and take action. 

4. Build your UX plan

Once you have the vision and have set your goals, the next step is to build a plan to execute it. The plan should detail what needs to be prioritized and the factors that need to be considered at every stage. But it is less about the timetable or the features and is more about helping teams achieve all the goals and the vision for the product.

Real-World Examples: Startups That Nailed UX and Why It Worked

1. Canva

When Canva launched in 2013, there was no shortage of design solutions. Adobe was dominating the market being the tool of choice for graphics designers and there were many apps that let anyone try their hand at design. 

Canva’s success was in creating an intuitive product anyone could figure out how to use without any training. While there were tools that offered a lot more flexibility and options, Canva offered templates and pre-designed elements with a drag-and-drop interface. While the competition enabled great designers to create amazing designs after a lot of training, Canva let a layperson create good enough designs in a short time without any training. 

2. Netflix

Even with new streaming platforms every year, Netflix has continued to be a market leader with its UX. They have a simple three-step process for onboarding users: enter the email ID, set up a password, and choose a plan. The onboarding process is designed to be smooth, clear, and clutter-free. 

Netflix is also constantly optimizing its services through data science. During the onboarding process, users are asked to choose a couple of movies and series they like. The app uses this information to suggest titles the user may like. Once the user starts watching, Netflix uses that data to improve its suggestions. 

Netflix is also known to optimize even small UX elements using data science. 

According to an anonymous developer who worked at Netflix, the team used two KPI to test features: number of hours watched and retention. Instead of assuming what users liked, the team would try out their ideas on small user populations. They even tested how long the autoplay countdown should be between episodes. 

When they launched the feature, users weren’t used to autoplay and a ten-second countdown produced the highest increase in hours watched. However, as users became more used to the feature, Netflix recently reduced the count to five seconds. 

3. Spotify

Spotify’s UX has played a huge role in its success. It has leveraged data science to offer a unique experience to every user. 

Spotify uses a fine-tuned algorithm that considers the music you listen to, the artists you follow, and even information like your age, location, and languages you listen to, to recommend songs you may like. One of the main reasons for Spotify’s success was its ability to recommend new songs based on your music taste. 

Spotify has also made listening to music a shared experience, allowing users to create and share playlists and releasing personalized “Spotify Wrapped” for every user at the end of the year. 

Common UX Mistakes Startups Should Avoid

1. Not prioritizing UX early in the product development process

Too many startups focus on launching quickly and building more features into their products without considering the user experience. This approach can result in a product that confuses and alienates users. 

To create good products, focus on UX before creating the first wireframe. 

2. Prioritizing business goals over user experience

UI/UX is a powerful tool for startups to achieve their business goals. But often many startups and businesses compromise on user experience by using dark patterns and other tricks to extract revenue from users or increase sign-ups for their products. While these dark patterns can produce results in the short term, they will alienate users in the long run and can even affect the brand’s reputation. 

3. Not collecting user feedback

Many startups put a lot of resources into building new features and rolling them out quickly. This often means fewer resources on UX research, user testing, and collecting user feedback. The result is a solution that gets progressively worse for the end user with too many features that most people can’t understand and very few people use. 

4. Focusing on appearance over user experience

Startups often try to use UI as a differentiator, often introducing new types of interfaces or designs that deviate from traditional styles. If done with proper research and testing, it can offer a new experience that users may love. However in many situations, product development teams fail to consider how the average user may interact with their designs. The result is often a product that users struggle to use. 

The Long-Term Impact of UX on Product Success and Brand Loyalty

A great user experience can be a differentiator and position your brand for long-term success. Even if your product does the exact same thing as your competition, you can have a competitive advantage if your product is easy to use, has a short learning curve, or is more accessible. 

On the other hand, a poor UX can break a product. Even something as simple as site speed can affect your business goals. According to a 2022 study, a site that takes one second to load has three times the conversion rate as a site that takes five seconds. Studies have also shown that a single poor experience can permanently drive users away from your products or brands. 

Ready to Elevate Your User Experience? Let’s Build Something Exceptional Together. 

Struggling with creating a seamless UX for your product? Unsure how to address your users’ pain points? Don’t worry – we’ve got you covered.

At LunarLab, we specialize in UX design solutions for startups, crafting user experiences that not only solve problems but also delight users. As a leading UX design agency for startups, our expert team, with years of experience working with global brands, is ready to help you design and build intuitive, engaging solutions that users love.

Let’s start your UX journey today! Contact us now to schedule a consultation and discover how we can make your product a success.

Frequently asked questions

1. What is UX design and why is it important for startups?

UX design or user experience design is the process designers use to create great experiences for users. It is used to make products that “feel good” for the user. Investing in UX helps startups grow their user base, increase conversion rates, and build loyalty among their users. 

2. At what stage of product development should startups start focusing on UX?

Ideally, at the earliest. UX should be a priority from the early stages of product development. As the development goes further, it becomes more costly to fix the UX. 

3. Why is UX design important for startup success?

Prioritizing UX design can help startups acquire users quickly, improve conversion rates, and enhance user retention. It can help startups reduce their time to revenue generation. 

4. Can a startup succeed without investing in UX?

No. Even if a startup has no competition, if the product is not easy to use or the users are struggling to understand it, they may soon abandon it. Investing in UX helps startups build solutions that offers a lot of value to its users. 

5. How can startups start improving their UX today?

Conducting a UX audit would be the first step to improving their UX. They can also perform UX tests with their users and iterate their products based on user feedback.

6. How does UX design impact the brand perception of a startup?

Users are more likely to trust a brand that has a track record of good user experience. If a brand is known to produce products that are easy to use and consistently lives upto user expectations, they will have a lot of success with future product launches as well. At the same time, users will be less likely to try products from a brand that has a track record of poor user experiences. 

7. How can LunarLab help startups with UX design?

LunarLab has helped businesses in diverse industries create better experiences for their users. The LunarLab team employs tried and proven methodologies to understand users and their concerns, build experiences that users love, and help businesses achieve their goals.