making a business case

Business Environment and UX Design

UX designers often work in profit-driven business environments where the focus is primarily on outcomes.
Business stakeholders typically prioritize the outputs of UX (e.g., financial gains) over the inputs (design processes, user research).

Build a strong business case for UX projects.
Communicate the benefits of UX in terms that stakeholders can easily understand.
Familiarize with common business metrics that impact the bottom line.

The two pivotal benefits for any business:
- Increasing Revenues: Generating more income via customer acquisition, conversion, satisfaction, retention, etc.
- Reducing Costs: Finding efficiency gains that lower operational expenses.
Additional business benefit terms include:
- Increased customer acquisition: Engaging new customers for future revenue.
- Increased conversions: Encouraging target actions (registration, purchases).
- Increased customer satisfaction: Leading to repeat business.
- Increased retention: Longer customer lifetimes equal higher revenue.
- Reduced customer churn: Lower rates of customer loss.
- Reduced time to market: Quicker product launches for earlier sales.

Faced significant retail competition, necessitating a redesign of their online shopping platform.
Project focuses on tangible business outcomes to enhance revenue.
Outcomes delivered:
- 51% increase in online sales.
- 84% increase in registrations.
- 620% increase in mobile shopping, positioning for future market trends.

A subsidiary competing in the mobile network sector.
Redesigned online shopping platform to boost sales effectiveness.
Outcomes achieved:
- 9.5% increase in customers.
- 17.7% increase in revenue.
- 170% increase in order value (higher spending per order).

Large organization aiming to reduce customer support costs.
Partnered with Nielsen Norman Group to optimize user support process.
Major outcomes:
- 70% reduction in support questions (from 7,000 to 2,000/month).
- Increased response efficiency from 40-60% to 80-90%, drastically improving user service and reducing costs.

Effectively convince the organization of the value of UX investment by:
- Estimating project costs and expected revenue increase or cost savings.
- Providing evidence for projections and being realistic about estimates.
Example of a project targeting checkout process inefficiencies:
- Statistics: 20% dropout during checkout results in a loss of €500,000 annually.
- Project goal: Reduce dropout by 20%, aiming for a revenue increase of roughly €100,000 per year, totaling €300,000 over three years.
- Costs: Assume redesign costs are around €100,000, securing a net benefit of €200,000.

A simple spreadsheet can illustrate financial projections for stakeholders:
- Yearly revenue increases and total projected uplift versus the project cost.
A succinct yet solid business case is essential for credibility within an organization and should clearly outline the financial benefits of UX initiatives.