UX design is a differentiator

Michael Janiak is co-founder and executive creative director. Pattern: digital design and e-commerce agency.

Your product research paid off. Brand taglines are well tested. You’ve created a killer funnel. Your ad is working. People are visiting your site in droves. excitement! Momentum! Financial reward!

But… low conversion rates. really low. So you’ll need more traffic to make up for that. That means you’ll end up paying more for customer acquisition than you thought possible. Moreover, every missed sale not only means immediate revenue, but also ongoing customer relationships and the many long-tail opportunities that come with it, such as email marketing, SMS marketing, subscriptions, and more. , loyalty, upsells, add-ons, and category expansion.

why? Because it made a common but infuriating mistake that too many brands still make. It failed to treat user experience (UX) as a key differentiator for brands and businesses.

Think about it. The hurdles to starting an e-commerce business are falling through the floor. Whether it’s dropshipping, Amazon, or hacking a viral product on TikTok, it’s easy to get started and even make a small profit. But what if you want to build value on something bigger than your product? You need a brand. And to build a valuable long-term successful brand, it serves as an important final step in converting potential customers into paying customers, as well as a way to differentiate your company from the noise. You need good UX design.

So what does an “investment in UX design” actually look like?

Investing in UX design means telling your story according to your consumer’s needs.

They saw your ad. They decided your product was worth considering. They clicked or tapped to visit your site. So? If all you have to offer is a countdown timer with free shipping and a templated overly-selling product page, you’re failing. why? Because you ignored the human context of your customer’s needs.

Take a shoe brand for example. With thousands of retailers and direct-to-consumer brands selling shoes, there are tens of thousands of choices. Most brands compete on price and style choices, but the most successful brands do not at all. We differentiate by offering a higher level of purpose, like “buy”. They build brand value by selling their vision, sentiment and community through their products. And they do this by investing in a carefully crafted UX that combines the context of a brand’s purpose with the tactical aspects of selling.

Your site is a canvas for telling people why you exist, why your product is great, and so they can beat the counterarguments and sell. You can do this seamlessly and reliably without using

Investing in UX design also means removing as much friction as possible so that you are much more likely to convert your customers.

Ecommerce is a numbers game. The more intuitive and supportive the experience is, the more likely potential customers are to try your product. Applies to downstream digital touchpoints.

Product pages are often the first page a potential customer visits. Especially if they found your brand via social. So the “product page” is the “home page” for a huge subset of your potential customers. So treat it like one! Create a product page experience where intuitive shopping UX (product, color, size selection, etc.) blends seamlessly with unique benefits, stories, differentiation, and social proof of what you sell. Time and again, we’ve seen this approach work wonders for improving cart-to-detail rates.

Investing in UX design is a great way to mitigate the rising costs of customer acquisition, especially through social media channels.

Rising CAC (Customer Acquisition Costs) is on the tip of every marketer and business owner, and for good reason.

When brands invest in UX design, they commit to doing the heavy lifting right from the start by working with experts to identify friction points and blockers in the user journey. Through this work, they can redesign these journeys for the optimal customer experience. The customer experience pays off in the form of higher conversions, higher revenue, and significantly higher return on ad spend. All of these contribute significantly to reducing the cost of acquiring customers in the long run.

Investing in digital experiences, and how those experiences deliver on brand promise and product value, is the most powerful way to grow your brand, increase revenue, and drive sales and customer loyalty. It’s one of the most influential ways. long term. Don’t make the mistake of spending too much time doing this. Your competitors certainly don’t.

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