Assessing the quality of the user experience that your product offers is undeniably important, but it is worth emphasizing why UX research is a good investment to help motivate you to make this a priority.
Here are just some of the main reasons that UX research is valuable to any business that wants to make its products as successful as possible.
It is cost-effective
If you are seeking to justify spending cash on UX research, the simplest way to convert any skeptics to the cause is to demonstrate that this is a proven strategy to boost sales and that you could net a hundredfold return on your initial investment.
Exhaustive research has shown time and again that a well-designed, user-friendly product will fare better than one which is not as thoroughly scrutinized and optimized during development.
This article on user experience research describes concisely how the cost-effectiveness of this process plays out, delivering perks ranging from improved customer satisfaction levels to shorter product development cycles. The end result is greater revenue generation for your organization and less wasted capital.
It streamlines decision-making
When working on a product or service, it is possible to become paralyzed by indecision, whether as a result of some innate uncertainty within the development team or in the event that there is an unresolved debate around which of two or more potential routes to take with the design.
Breaking this deadlock or deciding on a suitable path forward is much less of a challenge if you are able to leverage UX research to point you in the right direction. It will align your efforts with what customers really want and ensure that you do not need to rely on guesswork or false assumptions that might trip you up further down the line.
It encourages word of mouth marketing
You can splash as much cash into proactive marketing campaigns as you like, but at the end of the day unless the product is of a good quality and there is demand for it amongst consumers, all the ad spending in the world will not be enough to prevent it from failing. There are tons of examples of products which fell into this trap, and UX research is the best solution to steer clear of the same fate.
Most importantly of all it can help you to gain that all-important momentum through word of mouth recommendations by customers. That means you do not even necessarily need to dedicate a lot of your resources to marketing the product once it is launched, as the quality alone will be enough to generate a buzz.
It avoids support expenses spiraling upwards
If there are undetected issues with your product that only come to light once it gets into the hands of users, you can expect to face an influx of support requests that your customer service team may not be able to manage.
Conversely if you have invested in UX research you should have eliminated any problems ahead of time, once again saving your company cash and avoiding any reputational damage that might go along with it.
