Why You Need to Hire a UX Researcher for Your Product Team

Design is at the heart of any product’s appeal. A proper, well-thought design arouses a positive response in the customer, urging them to make emotional decisions to buy or subscribe.

Thus, good designs translate into higher revenues. But unfortunately, not all businesses can capture the practical value of design. As a result of under-investment in UI/UX, they lose many clients and much money. 

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Credit: Dovetail 

Thus, a reality check shows that every forward-looking business needs to hire UX developers for the product design team. It’s an optimal way of ensuring the product’s usability, customer buy-in, and consistency of its design with the company’s strategy. 

Let’s get deeper into the UX designer’s value for your business project. These insights can help you make an informed decision and look at the UX role in digital product development from a new angle. 

#1 Business Strategy Implementation 

Many companies falsely associate UX design with nice layouts and drawings of app screens. In reality, however, genius app design goes far beyond beauty and simplicity. It’s much more about the product’s relevance and ability to deliver meaningful results to users. 

A UX designer can achieve this by completing a detailed analysis of user preferences, interests, and non-addressed gaps. UX experts with a creative mindset and attention to detail can find immense business opportunities in user data, tailoring the new product’s design in a way consistent with business and user needs. 

#2 Better Understanding of Target Audience 

A startup can emerge based on a stellar idea, but there is never a guarantee that users will embrace it. Thus, a huge mistake is to follow one’s assumptions instead of asking people and studying the market.

Doing what you want instead of what the customers need is a killer for any business undertaking (with only a few rare exceptions). 

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Thus, a good idea is to go for a project only after UX research confirms its relevance and demand for such products in the market.

Once you know what your target users want and can deliver that value to people, your chances for success rise manifold. 

#3 Idea Validation 

Another significant contribution of UX designers to your business success is product validation at its early stage of development. This may be done with an MVP or a simple prototype to reflect your product’s key features and functionality.

You should give real users a glimpse at the project and ask them what they think. 

Testing is a quick and relatively cheap way to check whether you’re on the right way. A UX designer can make sense of the feedback and make adjustments to maximize user satisfaction. This approach saves tons of money and developer time otherwise needed to correct design flaws after the product’s creation and launch. 

Credit: Consider.ly 

#4 Higher ROI and Customer Satisfaction 

Though it may be hard to draw a link between design and profitability at once, it really exists. The issue with well-designed UX is that people like what they see and are ready to pay for it.

A usable product speaks for itself, doesn’t require extensive onboarding, and gives users the whole set of benefits they have been looking for.

All these pluses are a good reason not to look further. Thus, most users stop on your project and prefer it to the competition. As a result, you receive much higher customer retention and conversion rates, translating into ROI increases. 

#5 Brand Identity 

A notable benefit of having a UX designer in your team is the ability to build a consistent brand image across all products and channels.

People usually have a preliminary idea about your business before trying your new products or apps. Thus, a contradictory design departing from your broader brand image may confuse users. 

To avoid such a situation, you need a UX designer with a holistic design thinking approach to harmonize all aspects of your product design into a consistent whole. The outcome of such an effort is a stronger business value perception of your brand by target users. 

#6 Time and Money Savings 

At first, glance, hiring a UX designer may seem to be an unreasonable extra expenditure. The issue is especially significant for startups on a budget wishing to save money where possible. But if you think twice, you’ll realize that UX work is actually a big cost-saver. 

Once you engage a skilled UX designer early in the app development process, you will minimize the risk of costly design errors and usability flaws. A product designed with UX principles in mind will be much simpler for users.

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Such apps also don’t require frequent upgrades and save you money that you can allocate to other business priorities. So, an investment in UX is a wise step in optimizing your expenditures and speeding up the time to market. 

#7 Customer Satisfaction 

It might seem obvious, but we would like to stress this point separately. The primary responsibility of any UX designer is to make users happy, and design solutions can help achieve this task at different levels.

What you might perceive as simple typography or color choices goes deeper into the user psychology and familiar mental models. What seems to be an easy step of button positioning really deals with the complex science of customer journey and cognitive overload. 

No matter what takes place in the process of UX design, the outcome of well-done UX work is a happy, content customer who recommends your product and stays with you for a long time. Users feel when their interests are respected and reward such businesses with loyalty and trust. That’s an ideal result that every business owner strives for when launching a new product. 

Don’t Hesitate to Get a UX Designer on Board

UX design is a distinct aspect of the web design continuum that can help you take a different perspective at what clients really want from your product.

The UX designer can add much value and insight to the app development process. Thus, getting a UX specialist to your team is vital to your product’s usability, customer satisfaction, and marketability.

Nancy is a founder of Onedesblog and a copywriter with over 8 years of experience. She loves creating showcases with beautiful graphics resources, photography, and cooking. You can read more about Nancy in About Me section or say hi on Twitter.