Why UX Matters: Helping Startups Reach the Next Level
Any startup will likely tell you that garnering success as a new venture is challenging. Despite this, though, every business has to start somewhere. What matters for startups and businesses that are still in their infancy? User experience – or UX for short. It’s just one of many elements that contribute to the growth of the business as it concentrates on the target audience. As a business, you want to give them ample reasons to spend their money or time engaging with your startup. And that’s why UX matters.
Customer or client acquisition is crucial for building wealth as a business and without a great customer experience, they’ll likely look elsewhere. According to recent statistics, UX stats show companies that improve their website’s user experience, see an increase of up to 83% in conversion lift.
In this guide, you’ll learn some of the common challenges faced by startups and how implementing more UX strategies are going to benefit the business. Ready to level up your startup this year? Yes? In that case, read on.
Challenges Faced by Startups
Running a startup isn’t easy – if it were the case, then everyone would be having a go. There are some big challenges that are faced by startups and these challenges are fairly universal for many.
- Lack of market demand
- A failure to plan and set goals
- Lack of audience knowledge
- Financial management
- Leadership issues
- Time management
- Recruiting the wrong talent
Market demand is essential because, without the demand and need for your product or services, the tides of success will definitely be against you. Lack of planning and audience knowledge also weighs heavily on the chances of success.
Management skills are critical, whether that’s financial management of the business books, to time management. Are you a good leader? Are the right individuals in place when recruiting for the business?
All of the above contribute to the chances the business has of succeeding, let alone leveling up. According to Tech Crunch, now seems to be the worst time to own a startup. They found through their data that Q3 venture capital in 2022 dropped 33% from the last quarter and 53% from the same time of the year in 2021.
Every move you make as a startup contributes towards its success or failure of it. User experience is part of that process, so it’s necessary to pay attention to nurturing it.
Benefits of UX for Your Startup
Despite the bleak outlook that some figures show, it doesn’t make it any less possible to garner success as a startup. UX has many benefits, and it matters greatly when looking at the bigger picture.
What are some of the benefits of UX for your startup? Why does UX matters for your startup? Why invest so much time, effort, and money into it?
1. Utilizes Methods Like Card Sorting to Understand Users
The methods used with UX development vary greatly and they all help to contribute to a design team’s knowledge when creating products.
Whether it’s a new app for the business or a revamp of the company website, discover how users understand information with card sorting. This is just one of the popular methods that designers are able to use to uncover the best solutions and features for their customers.
Card sorting is a research method that is used with actual pieces of paper or through an online card sorting tool. The results from using this method include:
- Creation of an information architecture for a company website
- Uncovering a user’s perception of different concepts or ideas
- Knowledge of where users expect to see the particular content
- Labeling and grouping of content and ideas
2. Boosts Branding for Added Exposure
Branding and user experience are intrinsically linked with one another. Making use of UX practices helps deliver a brand identity to each and every product or service you create. Your designers should be using the company’s branding in everything they do.
It helps customers to recognize that the product or service in front of them is from your business. Not only does it bring added exposure to the table, but it also inspires loyalty from those customers who buy from you.
Recognizable branding is encouraging, even for those leads who’ve yet to convert. If it’s a brand they’ve already heard of, then they’re more likely to race down that sales funnel to conversion.
3. Helps Attract New Clients to the Business
Customer acquisition is a critical objective as a startup because in order to grow the business, you need to grow your customer base. With CX finding 46.7% of consumers that had a negative user experience told friends about this experience, it’s not something you want happening so early on in the business.
A good reputation will only prove fruitful when it comes to attracting new clients. A fantastic user experience is going to set tongues wagging with your customers. Hopefully, their great experience will ripple across their friendship groups as they tell others about their experience.
While retaining customers is proven to be the most successful for business growth, acquisition efforts shouldn’t be ignored.
4. Useful for Improving SEO
Search engine optimization or SEO for short is still as relevant and as important as it has been for businesses online. In order to stay relevant or to grow a business from scratch, your online presence should be leveraged with the use of SEO practices.
It’s another partnership between UX/UI design and with the right efforts made with SEO, it helps improve the site’s search functions and SERP rankings.
There are a number of efforts that are made when it comes to SEO during UX design. A few suggestions to get you started include:
- Make the website mobile-friendly
- Incorporate CTAs in marketing content
- Add image tags for accessibility
- Create high-quality content on all platforms
- Make your web design SEO-friendly
5. Saves a Great Deal of Time and Money
Having an optimized, UX design for your company website is going to help provide your customers with what they need sooner. For any startup, saving time and money is crucial.
Addressing usability problems helps to cut down the costs of having to re-design and delay the development process. Utilizing usability software for A/B testing is just one way to help avoid having to re-visit previous development stages.
Usability software like CrazyEgg for example offers features like heatmaps and scroll maps to help designers understand what users engage with and see the most.
It helps them focus on where new features or content needs to be placed in order to maximize its engagement.
6. Levels up the Quality of Service
While content is king and the amount of content you’re outputting contributes to the company’s exposure, the quality needs to be there. Great quality of service is achieved with a laser-eye focus on UX in your design team’s development of products and services.
By providing better services across the board, you’re positively impacting customer satisfaction. It’s this satisfaction that will empower them to spread the good news about your startup and everything it has to offer.
The better quality, the more reasons your customers have to stay and not look elsewhere.
Why UX Matters to Level up Your Startup for 2023
With 90% of startups failing in their efforts to be successful, cementing your venture is a lot harder than first thought. In 2023, understanding what will level up your business is essential to survival. Here are a few tips to level up your startup for 2023.
Plan and Strategize
Think about the bigger picture when it comes to your startup. What’s the end goal for the business? While it’s important to not neglect the present day, you want to be thinking several steps ahead to be prepared. If you want exponential growth for your business, it’s useful to look at what the future goals are for the startup.
Focus on Customer-centric Experiences
Customer-centric experiences are a focus for many businesses nowadays. According to one survey, companies surveyed reported a 2.5X revenue growth where customer-centricity was at a ‘mature’ level.
If you want both potential customers and customers to remember you, then focusing on the experience of your customers through UX design is key.
Keep a Healthy Bank Fund
It’s no surprise that money makes the world go around, especially for startups. With limited funds, it’s important to keep the bank balance topped up.
Of course, risks need to be taken and investments need to be made but balancing the books with more care will help reduce the chances of going into the red.
Utilize the Benefits of UX in Your Startup This Year
Leveraging UX/UI practices is key when it comes to any business but particularly for startups. With user engagement being highly effective in converting leads to customers, more effort and time should be dedicated to implementing UX practices across the business.
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