Let’s face it – money plays a huge role when it comes to a business’s success. Starting with the initial investment and ending with the daily expenses, managers and owners have to find the ideal balance that allows them to stay productive.
For startups and small to medium-sized businesses, this often requires sacrifices. The areas that often get the axe are the ones perceived as non-vital for the well-being of the company.
That’s why, important segments, like design, are often set aside or left to fight for scraps on a budget that’s too low for any kind of quality.
The job of a designer is to help the organization find and communicate with customers. And, in today’s market, when the regular internet user’s attention span is shorter, it’s crucial to catch people’s eye on the first try.
So, for every business owner who tries to save money by cutting down the design budget, here are the real costs of underpaid work.
You’ll be Bleeding Users
In an ideal situation, your conversion rate will keep steady somewhere between 2 percent and 5 percent. However, this only happens if visitors can easily interact with your website/app/blog/any other online product.
However, when the UX design is lacking in quality, the interaction becomes difficult and confusing. Users may have trouble finding the navigation system, the checkout process may be unnecessarily cumbersome, or the overall experience is frustrating.
When this happens, you’ll start bleeding users – after all, in today’s market, it’s easy to find a competitor with a better UX design. In this case, even if you somehow manage to maintain a good conversion rate, the number of paying customers will drop.
Luckily, there are ways to fix this issue and identify the problematic areas with the help of visitor recording and session replay tools. These software tools allow you to see what a real user does on your page and identify possible design mistakes.
The Build-Rebuild Cycle is Costly
When designers don’t have the time or the drive to think through and understand the flow of a product, the entire production chain suffers. When the UX design is not clear and user-focused, there will be miscommunications down the line.
Plus, when a newly-launched product already has usability issues, this puts off users from ever trying any future products. Also, your organization’s online reputation may suffer due to negative reviews from customers who are not happy with the design.
Sure, many businesses use customer feedback to rework their product and improve according to suggestions and complaints, but this involves new expenses and a delayed proper launch. However, partnering with a professional UX UI design company can help ensure that products are well-designed and meet user needs from the start, preventing these issues and frustrations altogether.
Loss of Talent
Good UX designers don’t have to think too much when they want to change jobs. According to CNNMoney’s top 100 careers with big growth, UX design has a growth rate of 13% and pays around $93k+.
So if they are forced to work on low pay or in a high-pressure environment, most of the employees who can actually make a difference will leave. Plus, UX designers may not be the only ones calling it quits.
The engineers who have to implement questionable designs, the people in charge of user satisfaction, and others involved in the production process will jump ship.
Wrap Up
In conclusion, like every job you do poorly, bad UX design will cost you a lot more in the long term. That’s why, if you outsource the service, you have to learn how to identify a good UX service provider.
On the other hand, if you keep it in-house, you have to avoid budget cuts on creative segments of your business.
