Impress Colleagues And Clients With The Value Of Experience Design

 Why should your colleagues, clients, and managers care about what you do? What is the value of experience design for your business? These are the questions you need to answer.

So, you work in user experience design. Or perhaps you believe in the importance of creating an outstanding user experience. Either way, you must demonstrate the value of experience design to your colleagues, clients, and managers. So, what is the value of UX to your business? How are you going to show that?

How best to demonstrate the value of experience design to my clients has been something I have explored for years now, and I have come to the conclusion we need to start with our definition of UX.

What is the difference between UX and other design disciplines?

In my experience (and I am sure in yours, too), many people are confused by what we do as user experience designers. They use UX and UI design interchangeably and still mistake design for drawing pretty pictures.

Of course, we know that the user experience extends well beyond the edge of an interface. It encompasses every part of the customer’s digital experience, from SEO and social to email apps and the website.

We need to do a better job at explaining our role if we are to have a hope of demonstrating the business value of experience design.

This makes it different from other design disciplines that focus on the visual. A UX designer is as interested in performance, copy, and accessibility as in visuals. They are part psychologists, marketers, copywriters, and designers.

We need to explain our role better if we hope to demonstrate the business value of experience design.

The business value of user experience

Regarding the value UX provides to your business, strangely, we should not be focusing on the user. Instead, we should focus on the return investment in UX provides.

The nature of that return will depend on your circumstances, and what exactly you focus on should depend on who you are talking to. This was perfectly summed up by a post written by UX advocate Jared Spool. He wrote:

You can find out what your executives are already convinced of. If they are any good at what they do, they likely have something they want to improve. It’s likely to be related to improving revenues, reducing costs, increasing the number of new customers, increasing the sales from existing customers, or increasing shareholder value. Good UX can help with each of those things. 

Jared Spool

Speaking to marketers about experience design

If you are talking to a marketer, you need to focus on the value of UX in marketing. You would talk about word-of-mouth recommendations, positive reviews, and turning users into advocates for the brand. Most of all, you should focus on improvements to lead acquisition or sales, the primary key performance indicators marketers monitor.

Speaking to sales or commerce teams

However, suppose you are talking to sales, ecommerce teams, or even product teams. In that case, the emphasis will be on topics like customer retention, average order value, or lifetime value, all of which good user experience design can positively impact.

Showing the value of experience design with internal applications

Of course, it may be that you work on internal staff applications. How can product designers maximize the value they provide to users when they work on internal operations? You might not improve profits, but you will save users time and, by extension, the company money.

Your efforts will reduce the time it takes for employees to complete critical tasks, help them avoid making mistakes, and allow them to access information faster. These activities can improve organizational efficiencies, something most senior management teams care deeply about.

All of that said, words are cheap. If you want to prove the value of experience design, then you need to support your claims with data.

What is the value of UX statistics?

Gathering statistics and data around your work is vital in demonstrating your return on investment to the business. Therefore, we need to become data nerds to convince others of our value.

We need to become data nerds if we hope to convince others of our value.

Some data is readily available. Analytics, ecommerce platforms, and marketing tools like Hubspot can all provide valuable insights we can tie our work to. However, more specialist tools like VWO can prove even more helpful, as they do everything from heatmaps to UX funnels and AB testing.

VWO is one of the best tools for building a compelling case for UX.

Admittedly, sometimes we must get creative to tie data to our work. However, even a few assumptions and best guesses are better than presenting no evidence at all.

If you are starting or have no budget, Microsoft Clarity can provide valuable data about the value of UX for free.

What is the importance of experience design?

As experience design advocates, we tend to think of the importance of UX primarily around the benefits it provides to users and customers.

However, its actual value lies in the bottom line. Ultimately, we seek to improve the experience because it improves revenue and reduces costs. We would give our products and services away for free if we were purely altruistic. After all, that would offer the best experience.

If we seek to sell the value of experience design to others, we must focus on business objectives rather than user needs. This is the harsh reality of a commercially driven web.