How to Create a UX Strategy That Drives Business Results

Сreating an engaging UX design is a whole development journey that requires setting clear goals and vision. Almost every designer must have heard the statement from the Forrester study: “1 dollar invested in UX brings from $2 to $100 in return.” This fact cannot be neglected while designing, so the proper strategy is half the battle.

Another research by Nielsen Norman Group has shown that UX professionals often need more understanding of the final result and are being led toward business needs while other needs stay out of their attention. Also, the product development team often focuses on the practical skills of the designers, turning a blind eye to clear planning.

This article will cover this topic and reveal what steps should be taken to create a proper plan to achieve the desired results.

What Is a UX Strategy?

A UX strategy is a detailed plan for building a UX design process to receive a design that aligns with the company goals and emphasizes the brand identity. It also sets deadlines and a scope of work for every specialist so that the work can be performed within an assigned timeframe.

An essential aspect of a user experience strategy is that it combines business and user needs. These aspects must be integrated, as it is only possible to profit by putting the customer at the center.

How Does UX Strategy Fit into the Overall UI/UX Design Process?

It would be inaccurate to presume that user experience strategy goes separately from the overall design process. While building a detailed plan for developing the functional side of the product design, the aesthetic side of the UI must also be taken into account. For instance, such stages as user research or final testing cannot be completed without a proper understanding of how the whole picture should look. This is essential for adhering to one style guide, optimizing processes, and creating a unique design that will provide an outstanding user experience.

What Are the Key Advantages of a Well-Planned UX Strategy?

Having a thorough UX design development plan comes with many benefits. Here are some of them:

• It sets a clear goal and measures success. Without a definite purpose, it is impossible to identify what the team of designers should aim for. They might be spending resources on failure and misdirection if they don’t know how to assess and measure their actions.
• It gives a chance to get stakeholders on board. Not only do design professionals take part in strategy creation, but company executives as well. The thing is that good design reflects on the return on investment (ROI) rate, and that is directly connected with the business goals.
• It teaches all the involved about a user. An in-depth UX research reveals tons of valuable information about the end-user. And when everyone, even customer service agents, adheres to a customer-centered mentality, they will go far beyond the set goals.

Key Elements of UX Strategy

Every successful UX design project starts with defining a suitable strategy. Even though the UX strategy may differ for every case, its basics remain the same and consist of three main elements. Usually, the design specialists state that there are only three main elements of any existing UX plan. These elements are vision, goals, and plan. Let’s take a closer look at each of them and find out the main differences.

• UX strategy vision. The vision of the strategy is the final destination of your project. At this stage, the design team should get together and discuss what final result you would like to achieve at the end. This stage is essential because, without a clear vision, your project will walk in the dark without an understanding of the final destination.
• UX strategy goals. While setting “goals” for your strategy, the team will choose ways to evaluate the reached checkpoints. If you decide to skip that part, the team will not be able to objectively assess the product’s development process and add the necessary edits.
• UX strategy plan. The final step is approving the plan for the whole UX development process. Simply put, this plan will contain the main steps and processes your team has to take to achieve the final result. Of course, that doesn’t mean the plan is decisive and can be easily changed during the working process.

How to Create a UX Strategy

There is nothing complicated about creating a successful UX plan. However, this process has some strict steps to follow to create a successful UX plan.

Evaluate Your Project

Before starting to brainstorm ideas for your user experience strategy, you should analyze the current state of your product. Such a simple action will help you underline the weak spots of the project and include them in the discussion for strategy creation. For a successful strategy launch, the product you’re currently working with should be perfectly studied and analyzed. Unfortunately, without the proper evaluation, the team can choose the wrong ways to evolve the UX design.

Define Your Goals

The next step in successful strategy creation is underlining the goals that must be achieved with a chosen strategy’s help. For a better understanding, you can imagine the UX strategy as a tool for achieving specific goals. Think about what your product means to bring into the world and what value it has for your customers. Based on the acquired data, you can start the direct development of the strategy.

Analyze the Competitors

It’s better to learn from your competitors’ mistakes and avoid making them in your product. That’s why an analysis of the companies related to your field will greatly help you initiate suitable decisions. Moreover, it will help you discover the main current market particularities, enhance your strategy’s existing ideas, and fill the demand in the market with some unique solutions that your company will be offering.

Reconsider Strategy

Sometimes, the strategy you thought would run like a Swiss clock just doesn’t work as it should. Any unfortunate circumstances for your product can be easily avoided if you reconsider the chosen solutions at the right time. Even when you come up with some suitable idea, that doesn’t mean it’s inevitably carved in stone without any possibility for enhancement. You are free to add changes to your plan during its development, especially when the situation requires intervention.

Common Mistakes to Avoid in the Creation of a UX Strategy

If you want to develop your product without any unfortunate circumstances, you better take your time to “sharpen your axe” properly. That’s why, in this section, we gathered together the main mistakes that significantly slow you down during the process of strategy creation.

Rushing the Launch of the Strategy

The first thing that may catch any company is a hurry to release the product as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, many experienced and rookie companies have fallen into this trick, and as a result, the effects of such a decision could have been better. The bitter truth is that any rush may cost you not only your budget and time but even the outcome of the whole project. Eventually, you always have to measure twice and cut once.

Avoiding Outsourced Help

Another mistake that may become a stumbling block on success is avoiding professional help. Usually, many companies try to cover all of the necessary spheres, even with a lack of professional expertise. And that’s a fatal mistake that may significantly influence the creation of the UX. As a solution, you can always count on outsourcing help from the experts in the field. It’s not a secret that it will cause additional expenses, but that is the price of success.

Ignoring Customers’ Testimonials

Sometimes, developers and design teams may not pay enough attention to the user’s feedback. That’s a fatal mistake since the essence of creating the UX strategy is to enhance your customers’ experience with your product’s interface. The company and designers, primarily, have to be aware of the customer’s needs and include this data in the UX strategy.

Examples of Successful UX Strategies

Sometimes, you only need inspiration from some decent companies to create something worthwhile. In this section, we have collected some product giants that significantly succeed in UX strategies.

Slack

Slack is a pioneer in the sphere of corporate messengers. One of the reasons for such success was an extremely successful UX strategy that landed on the bull’s eye of customer needs. The UX strategy of the platform focuses on simplicity and functionality at the same time. Slack offers a convenient and user-friendly interface for quick corporate communication. Moreover, a variety of integrations with other popular platforms, like Google or Miro, make Slack an undoubted leader in the market.

Apple

You will not find a more devoted audience than the users of Apple products. Of course, the UX strategy that was used by the company played a significant role in this. In their UX strategy, Apple designers focused on the creation of functional but, at the same time, unique designs that would not be similar to any other products. Without any doubt, Apple succeeded in this idea, since Apple users rarely switch to Android-powered devices after they experience interaction with iOS.

Google

The peculiarity of Google is that it provides many different tools under its brand. Still, if you look at each of the tools separately, they will all have some features inherent only to Google. That is a result of the successful UX strategy that has been developed by Google for decades. In its UX strategy, Google focuses on innovations and technologies, yet the platform remains as convenient as it was for millions of users around the globe. That is a result of the proper usage of modern technologies in combination with the user’s feedback.

Importance of UX Strategy for Business

Besides the obvious importance of the UX strategy for the product’s development, it also directly influences the well-being of your business. The truth is that the companies that spend enough time on their relevant user experience strategy end up receiving more benefits than companies that don’t spend enough time on their UX strategies. In this section, we have collected the main factors that show the importance of a relevant UX strategy.

• Increasing ROI and profit. Companies that spend enough attention on developing their UX strategies are inclined to receive increased ROI and overall profit from the product. Even though the company spends more money initially, such investments will double the profit shortly.
• Better connection with the audience. Another advantage any company with a good UX strategy receives is a great connection with an audience. A good UX strategy attracts customers to the process of direct product improvement. That significantly increases trust from the customer towards the company and their overall involvement.

How to Start Operating with a UX Strategy

The final stage is directly implementing the UX strategy into your product development processes. During this process, your company will start following the structure that has been created during the formation of your plan. If all necessary factors have been taken into account, it is most likely that your strategy will not require any edits. However, for better results, a strategy analysis should be continuous until the end of the development process.