Integrate UX research throughout product development to impact business goals

UserZoom’s State of UX Survey 2022 delivers a collection of industry-enlightening insights. But one stands out among all others... Digital experiences perform poorly when UX insights are not routinely embedded in decision-making.

For the last four years, UserZoom has surveyed the UX research industry to create The State of UX report. For this year’s edition, we gathered opinions from nearly 700 UX professionals from 42 countries about the condition of UX in their organizations. 

One of the major takeaways is that organizations are missing out on golden UX optimization opportunities—and leaving growth opportunities and financial gains out on the field.

Digital experiences perform poorly when UX insights are not routinely embedded in decision-making. And because poor digital experiences lead to lost customers, organizations are losing money and letting competitors take the digital advantage.

So, therefore: Organizations must consistently integrate UX research into every stage of their product development lifecycles.

The impact of UX on key business metrics

Our survey respondents confirmed that UX really does positively impact revenue, profits, customer satisfaction—in fact, just about every major metric you can think of. This happens even if UX research isn’t applied consistently across the business. 

However, 45% of organizations don’t integrate user research practices properly into the entire product development cycle. And 43% of organizations don’t have processes in place to make design and UX decisions based on feedback. 

In other words, too many companies are wasting UX research’s potential by failing to consistently integrate UX research into their product development processes. Sometimes it happens at the initial ideation and research stage. Sometimes it happens as launch approaches. But only when it spans every step can it deliver the dramatic returns seen above. 

Advantages of integrating UX research into the product development lifecycle

Making the most of UX research during the process of product development offers many advantages.

At an early stage, It enables teams to confirm the viability of products, to weed out bad ideas, or to transform good ideas into great ones.

Throughout the whole process, research can be used at various stages to test changes and make improvements so that the finished product arrives before customers as fully developed as possible.

Companies that leave users out of critical investment and product decisions don’t get the full benefit of their UX investment, and worse still, miss out on the financial gains of using real UX insights to shape their products and services. 

These results are all the more surprising given that companies that integrate UX into the product development process see significant, measurable gains on key business metrics.

By margins of 30+ points, digital experience teams that consistently integrate user research in product development report a positive impact on customer satisfaction (80% to 50%) and brand perception (76% to 45%), compared to those that don’t.

On critical metrics that impact the bottom line—retention, conversion, and revenue—the teams that integrate user research in product development are roughly twice as likely to outperform those that don’t.

In summary

Our results highlight how critical it is to embed UX research throughout the product development life cycle. From the beginning, UX research enables you to gain assurance about your solution, tweak ideas based on viable feedback and transform good ideas into great ones.

Having a deeper understanding of the what, why, AND how of your users will also help power an insights-driven culture.