What you risk dealing with when neglecting UX research

Who needs that UX research? Is this UX research really necessary? If these are the kind of questions you asked at least once, you’ve opened the right tab.

When you start a business or aim to develop and launch a new product, you have millions of things to do and consider. So it’s often the case that you need to cut some things off to focus on aspects you think are more important. And sometimes, one of those things there are basic steps that seem to be not so relevant, like UX research.?

And no, no, this isn’t yet another blog post where business owners are blamed for not doing it. Instead, in this article, I aim to try to change your perspective on the research and show you its value from a different angle. So let me walk you through some major misconceptions about the research and show you the risks you can face if neglecting it.

Wait a second: does UX research differ from market research?

Sometimes one can put UX and market research into one melting pot. These two do have some common aspects — they both include the same methods like interviews, surveys, competitive analysis, etc., and ultimately they’re essential to understanding people. But there is a fine line that sets them apart. They come from different routes and set their focus on different objectives.?

Market research allows us to analyze people as potential customers and aims to capture their attitude toward an offering, discover product-market fit, etc. On the other hand, UX research dives into users’ interaction with your product or service, their motivations, and their actions in it. Sometimes market research can be a part of UX. It depends on your end goal and the stage your product is on.

That we settled, let’s move on.

Top objections you might (or even definitely) have against UX research?

At Lazarev. — AI & Digital Product Design Agency we can't move on into the design process without conducting UX research first. And why is that? Well, to create something people will eagerly use, we have to understand at least:

• the product or service you offer
• your goals as a business owner
• the people who will benefit from your offer

Yeah, it’s all done during the initial stages of UX research. But having worked with hundreds of projects over the past 7 years, we had cases when some of our clients initially didn't really understand the core meaning and value of such research. And that's completely fine — we consider it our job to show the benefits of UX research and address objections you and other business owners have against it.?

Here are some of the most common.

"We don't have finances for that"

It’s no secret that startups can be tight on budgets and want to make the most of what they have. But it's all about your perspective and priorities. Think about this: launching a product without knowing if it serves the people you want to use it is like a shot in the dark — hit or miss. In the case of the latter, a decision to skip UX research can multiply in time and cost because you'd have to go back to the drawing board and redo it.?

Besides, one of the superpowers UX research has is an "invisible" ROI — saved money on avoiding hitting a market with something people don't know how to use. Look at it this way — the number of hours designers need to implement ideas and engineers to redevelop a product at least doubles the time necessary to do UX research. So leveraging the last, you save money in labor and opportunity costs linked to time to market.

Let me tell you a story. One of our clients we work with is an app that helps people to enter the gig economy. Specifically, it connects users (couriers and drivers) with companies that provide delivery and transport services, like supermarkets, Uber, Bolt, and so on. They also facilitate cooperation of both sides and help manage finances that platform users earn from working with those companies.

The client came up to us with a rough MVP of the platform and on our end, we had to conduct in-depth research of their product and revitalize its UI/UX design. So the journey began. The Lazarev. team dove into the app's target audience, outlined key user personas, their needs, frustrations, and motivations. The platform's and website's analysis was also a game-changer, as we discovered some major issues like: the site's load time exceeded the norm, there were some basic errors like buttons missing links, filters that didn't work, etc.?

The platform itself also had a major problem — a too complex registration flow. It did not show any error messages or guide people further on their sign-up flow. The app showed only a 10% conversion rate. After we uncovered these and other issues, we reworked the flow and improved the interface design. As a result, 2 weeks after releasing the new version, the app has hit a 30% conversion rate — 3 times as much.

What I'm trying to say is that with in-depth UX research, our client avoided some risks by not going into marketing campaigns to promote a product that had issues this major. Instead, he invested money and took time and trust in our approach. The result speaks for itself, doesn't it?

"We just don't have enough time for that"

This one usually goes hand in hand with the previous objection. Yes, it doesn't take a minute to dive into users' needs, motivations and uncover some valuable information that would elevate your product. And once again, it's all about how you look at it. Investing time into UX research means saving it and money during the development and marketing processes. It helps the production stage run more efficiently as you base it on solid data about your target user behavior in a product.?

Let me tell you about a case I recently came across. Matalan is a fashion and homeware e-commerce brand. They had some quantitative information about their users, but without qualitative UX research, they struggled to interpret this data. So the team usually made decisions relying on their gut feelings, which is, in such a setting, not a good idea. As a result, the people bounced at the checkout. The team was losing money and didn't know why.?

But what they did know was that it was time to do something about it. So Matalan made up its mind to redesign the website. Its UX crew interviewed users to collect feedback and flag bugs and glitches in their experience. The findings helped the team eliminate areas of friction in the customer journey and improve the checkout process. And guess what — their conversion rates jumped by 1.23%.?

"We know all about our potential customers/users"

I can’t deny that there are business owners who did their homework and got to know people they want to cater to. But here’s a “but” — it’s often the case that they turned to analytics and A/B testing to define their user personas. There’s nothing wrong about it. Except these methods help learn about people you target from customers perspective and ultimately they provide less information than you could benefit from. Just knowing what your users want limits you from deeper understanding of their motivations behind their preferences and offering them solutions they need.?

UX research is like a swiss knife with various tools that help level with your target audience and let them speak their minds and answer not only the “what” questions but significantly in-depth the “why”ones.

Here's an example. At Lazarev. we worked with a client who tasked us to design an app called Mappn. It's an interactive platform that helps people to find places to party or to relax, like clubs, bars, coffee houses, etc., compare how busy venues are and decide on the best time to visit them.

As usual, we did a thorough research, including product, market, competitive analyses and user interviews. When talking to the target audience, we wanted to know their habits of going out, ways of looking for places and what apps they used, etc.?

But also we didn’t forget to ask "why" questions. They’re fundamental for digging deeper into users' mindsets and motivations. Our team uncovered that some people often don't bother to leave comments online on services or products. Because they don't always remember all the details or just don't have time for it. Such findings allowed us to avoid the traditional reviews section and developed a tag system for people to share their experiences on the places they visited.?

"We're users ourselves"

Now, this one can be dangerous. Why? Even though you might be your product’s user, there may also be a thick wall of biases that risk standing in the way of reaching the other part of your target audience. Because they can think and act far from the way you do.?

For instance, we're currently working on our SaaS product, Upfeed. It's a smart RSS reader for freelancers and agencies that work on freelance platforms. Upfeed empowers users to monitor, filter, and get a list of automatically prioritized job opportunities.?

And here's a thing — we created this tool based on our own needs thinking our target audience faced identical challenges. That's when we sidetracked the whole project — our team prioritized the wrong features over those that brought actual value. And the biggest failure was that the product solved a problem irrelevant to our potential users.?

So we had to go back to the drawing board and redo a major part of the user flow. But that time, UX research was a priority — our team ran user interviews and moderated usability tests. And you know what? It all paid off with information and insights that helped us discover our target audience's needs, see how they interacted with the product and what we had to improve.?

UX research is your go-to tool for fishing objective information about your target audience and their needs from the sea of preconceived assumptions.

What you risk dealing with when neglecting UX research

Now, let’s segue into a bit of a dark place.The one of the possible consequences you can face when overlooking UX research and diving into full-on design and development. I’ll break down each using real cases.?

Here’s what you risk getting instead of the great results you strive for.?

Wasted money and time on development

If you go right into the design and production processes and consider your assumptions as solid facts rather than validating them beforehand, you step into a zone of the unknown. Why? Because you invest money and hours of work on something that has no or little foundation under it. And so there is a chance that during user testing (please don't skip it either) or even worse after launch, problems may flood you and your team.?

What can cause it? For example, your assumptions about people using a product turned out to be wrong, or features confuse users, or they don't need them to get the job done, etc. And so the unnecessary rework begins — you invest time and money to make things right.?

Let me clarify UX research doesn't do some magic and prevents you at 100% from corrections. But there is quite a difference between redoing some avoidable processes and adding some tweaks. And numbers speak for that. The IEEE , an association of engineers and technologists, estimated that 40-50% of software development is rework one could avoid. Imagine your development agency rolled out the check for $90 000 at the end of your cooperation after multiple iterations and bug-fixing processes. $36 000 of those could have been saved if you hadn't skipped the UX part. How does it sound??

Also, sometimes one tiny missing detail can cost millions. That's what happened to Citibank, one the biggest financial institutions in the world. And it was not so long ago — in 2021. So long story short, a year earlier, in 2020, three Citibank employees made a transaction to their clients' creditors. It seems like a daily routine for them, right??

But here's a problem — instead of sending $7.8 million, they wired the humongous $900 million . You may rule it as a simple human mistake.

To some extent, you'd be right. However, the fault was also the software that let it happen. See, the system warned about the transaction, but it didn't show the number that bank employees were about to send. They did check the transfer before approving it. They just didn't see anything wrong.

And here's another circle of troubles — Citibank demanded recipients give money back, but they refused, even a part of the sum. So the whole thing moved to court, and a judge ruled that creditors are not obliged to return them. As you can guess, the ending of this story is far from happy — Citibank lost $500 million basically for a lousy design.?

Of course, most companies don't face problems this dramatic, but they still deal with mistakes they could have easily avoided through in-depth research and testing.?

Losing chances to elevate revenues?

Yes, you can save money by skipping UX research and building a strategy for your product based on the data it provides. It really is the case if you work for the short run, but if you look at it from a long-term perspective — the picture is different. Let me explain. When you come up with a digital product, you likely aim to boost the business metrics.?

Depending on your goals, it can be increasing sales, the number of clicks on ads, visiting more web pages, etc. It comes down to simple math — the more goals you hit, the higher your product's conversion and revenue. So if people struggle with your website or app and have a poor user experience, it affects your conversion. For instance, a report shows that about 90% of surveyed users said they stopped using an app due to bad performance.

Sky-high customer support check

I guess we, as human beings, don't really like giving up. The same goes when people have trouble with an app or a website — they'd contact customer support. You might think users do it now and then, it's a common thing, and startups are ready for that. And you're right, except for cases when people struggle with your product simultaneously and flood to customer support to help them. Your employees may not be ready for such a tense situation, so you'd need them to work overtime or find extra people to deal with it, which in both cases means extra spending.

Let's imagine this — you’re a fintech startup that came up with a banking app. Since you decided there was no time or need to do deep UX research, including user testing, before diving into development, you missed a tiny detail — a confirmation popup or screen before making a transaction. When you launched an app, some of its users sent $2,000 instead of $200, others did the same but mixed $150 with $1500, and now they're unhappy about it.?

So people massively turn to customer support trying to get their money back. Your crew works overtime to solve the issue, which means additional labor costs. On top of that, you also need to roll back and fix the problem, which is more expensive at this point of development. Ouch.

As a business owner, I think you have more things to take care of. Why stress about this one, right? UX research can help you avoid such issues as you get to test your product from various angles before hitting the market.

Struggling to build a connection with users and get their loyalty?

Good design is when people can trouble-free navigate your product and get their job done. Great design is the latter, plus a deeper connection with your target audience that helps turn them into loyal advocates of your offer. This magic happens when you put users' needs at the center of the design process. And this, in turn, is possible with UX research — when you understand your potential customers and think of ways how your product can solve the issues they face. But, without in-depth analysis, achieving it can be a true challenge.

Moreover, it's not about an emotional connection with the target audience alone. There is a more rational side to it. As a business owner, you strive to reach customers and empower them to stay and use your product constantly, which is five times more cost-effective than attracting new ones. And so when you know your target audience, you will develop solutions to make them come back again and again and, thus, increase the retention rate.?

Falling behind competitors

You'd probably agree that competition is ruthless and going strong. And so if you don't stand out, people won't see you. One of the ways to catch your target audience's eye is design that addresses their needs. And here we go again — UX research is what can help you achieve it. You get to explore other businesses' features and their success, compare them to what users want and develop a solution that would turn your customers' heads.?

Here's a story about an app called Google Wave. It allowed people to build documents the company called "waves" from conversations. The app was a hot mix of features one would find in emails, instant messaging, online forums, and wikis.?

What went wrong? The team filled Wave with the functionality they assumed people needed, but it didn't replace any collaboration tools on the market. The product turned out to be too complex for users to understand. So Google Wave moved on to be an invite-only service which didn't really benefit it as such a move caused friction for those who wanted to try the app. In 15 months, the team shut down the initiative.

Before you leave

The prime goal of this blog post isn't to depress or convince you your initiative is bound to fail without UX research. But why gamble on your venture's success when there are tried-and-true methods that contribute to it? This article is about showing you the value of UX research and pointing at the unnecessary risks you can avoid when you approach your product with informed and data-based decisions.??