For growth-minded founders and marketing leads, UX design becomes a lever to fix funnel leaks, increase conversion and improve retention without guessing. When you understand how UX decisions shape behaviour, it gets much easier to decide where to invest, what to test and which improvements will actually move revenue, not just surface metrics.
What is UX design?
Definition of user experience design in simple terms
Through UX design, teams shape how people interact with a product so that using it feels useful, easy and satisfying while still serving business goals. The work blends user research, information architecture, interaction patterns and testing so that people can find what they need quickly and complete tasks without friction.
At its core, UX design connects user needs, business goals and technical constraints into a coherent set of flows and behaviours. Good UX design turns qualitative insight and analytics into prioritised changes that improve key metrics, for example reducing onboarding drop off or increasing checkout completion.
- User research, interviews and behavioural analytics
- Information architecture and mapped user journeys
- Interaction design, wireframes and rapid prototypes
- Usability testing, accessibility checks and performance measurement
Together these components form a UX design practice that links decisions to measurable outcomes, giving teams a repeatable way to solve usability problems and validate changes before wide release.
How UX design differs from general product or graphic design
UX design differs from graphic design because it prioritises flows and outcomes over aesthetics. Graphic design focuses on visual communication and branding, while UX design defines the underlying structure, interactions and content strategy that make interfaces useful and discoverable.
Compared with general product design, UX work tends to zoom in on discovery and validation activities such as journey mapping, usability testing and rapid prototyping. These upstream activities feed into engineering and execution work like website development and landing page optimisation described in how to design winning landingpages, ensuring design choices improve activation and retention rather than just look good.
Why UX design matters for product and growth teams
UX design matters because it directly shapes how easily users move through your funnels, how quickly they find value and whether they come back. For growth minded teams, it is one of the most cost effective levers to improve activation, conversion and retention without increasing media spend.
Impact on activation, retention and revenue
When onboarding flows are confusing or slow, new users churn before they experience value, which kills activation and long term revenue. Thoughtful UX design clarifies the next step at every moment, reduces form friction and focuses attention on the actions that correlate most with long term retention.
In ecommerce, smaller UX issues, for example unclear shipping costs or unexpected fields at checkout, can quietly erode conversion rate and average order value. Fixing these through structured UX design work often delivers a higher ROI than increasing ad budgets, because improvements compound across all traffic sources.
For subscription or SaaS products, UX design also shapes expansion revenue by making it easy to discover advanced features and upgrade paths. Clean dashboards, clear empty states and well timed in product prompts guide users to adopt more of the product, which lifts LTV without aggressive sales pressure.
How UX design supports SEO, CRO and paid acquisition
Strong UX design multiplies the impact of SEO, CRO and paid media by ensuring that the traffic you pay or optimise for can actually convert. Search engines reward fast, intuitive experiences, and ad platforms factor landing page quality into costs, so UX choices affect both ranking and ROAS.
For organic growth, UX design influences how long users stay, how many pages they visit and how likely they are to return, all of which feed into behavioural signals that support rankings. It also underpins CRO work, because you can only A/B test effectively when user journeys are well defined and measurable.
- Clear information architecture increases relevance for targeted keywords and supports SEO work.
- Fast loading, stable pages improve Core Web Vitals, which you can see explored in depth in the Core Web Vitals guide.
- Consistent layouts and messaging raise landing page conversion rates, boosting CRO outcomes.
- Better mobile UX reduces bounce from paid social and search campaigns, improving paid media performance.
- Well structured internal links, backed by smart internal linking tactics, help users and crawlers alike.
Teams that treat UX design as part of their acquisition and optimisation system, not an isolated design task, usually see lower CAC and higher LTV at the same budget levels. This is the mindset embedded in how 6th Man runs integrated growth programmes rather than isolated channel campaigns.
The difference between UI and UX design
UI and UX work together but focus on different aspects of the product. UX design defines the underlying flows, structure and content that make a journey useful, while UI design shapes the look, feel and interaction details that bring those flows to life inside the interface.
UX design focuses on flows, structure and behavior
UX design maps the journey from the user’s first touchpoint to long term engagement, then organises screens and states around that path. It answers questions like what the user is trying to do, which steps are essential and where they are likely to drop off.
At this level, designers work with user research, analytics and business goals to define information architecture and interaction patterns. They specify what happens when a user taps a button, makes a mistake or returns after a break, so the behaviour of the product feels coherent and predictable.
UI design focuses on visual look and interaction details
UI design takes the structure defined by UX design and expresses it through layout, colour, typography and micro interactions. It is concerned with how buttons look, how content is spaced and how states transition, so the interface feels polished and on brand.
Good UI design supports usability by making hierarchy and affordances obvious, for example primary actions that visually stand out from secondary links. It turns wireframes into high fidelity mockups that engineering teams can implement, often in close collaboration with brand and marketing.
How UX and UI design work together in one product team
On a lean product team, the same person may handle both UX and UI, but the work still follows a sequence from flow definition to visual refinement. UX design sets the blueprint, then UI design tests ways to present that blueprint clearly and convincingly across breakpoints and devices.
In practice, this collaboration is iterative, with UI explorations revealing edge cases that require small UX adjustments. High performing teams treat UX and UI designers as equal partners who share metrics like activation rate and checkout conversion, rather than siloing one as creative and the other as technical.
10 UX design principles every product team should follow
These 10 UX design principles give product and growth teams a practical checklist for building and improving digital experiences. They apply equally to websites, SaaS products and ecommerce flows, and they help you focus limited resources on changes that remove friction and grow key metrics.
1. Start with user research, not assumptions
Teams often ship features based on internal opinions, then wonder why adoption is low or churn is high. Starting with lean user research, such as interviews, screen recordings and simple surveys, surfaces real jobs to be done and pain points that should shape your roadmap.
You do not need a lab to do this, only a repeatable habit of talking to users and triangulating that input with analytics. Over time, UX design that is grounded in research reduces the volume of rework and supports clearer prioritisation in product discussions.
2. Define clear user journeys around business goals
Without clear journeys, every page or screen is designed in isolation and users get lost in dead ends or loops. Mapping the ideal path from first visit to value, for example from landing page to first successful use, lets you measure and improve each step.
Strong UX design connects these journeys to business goals, for instance which actions predict retention or which products drive margin. This keeps debates focused on funnel performance rather than personal taste about layouts or colour palettes.
3. Prioritize simplicity and reduce cognitive load
Every extra choice, field or paragraph of copy adds cognitive load that slows users down and increases drop off. Simplifying an interface usually means removing or hiding non essential options, grouping related information and reducing the number of steps in a flow.
You can often achieve significant gains by cutting just one step or input from key forms, especially in checkout or signup. A helpful way to approach this within UX design is to rank every element by how much it contributes to user success versus how much effort it requires.
- Remove or delay fields that are not essential to the current step.
- Use progressive disclosure to show advanced options only when needed.
- Chunk long processes into clear, numbered steps with visible progress.
- Write concise, scannable copy with clear headings and bullet points sparingly.
These tactics make complex flows feel manageable and improve completion rates without sacrificing necessary information. They also lower support load, since users can complete tasks without needing external help or documentation.
4. Design for clarity, not cleverness
Clever microcopy or unusual patterns might win internal awards, but they often confuse users who just want to complete a task. Clear labels, predictable buttons and straightforward headlines are more powerful than playful wording that obscures meaning.
For growth teams, this principle should guide everything from navigation labels to pricing page layouts, because misinterpretation at these points directly harms revenue. UX design that prioritises clarity also makes experimentation easier, since you know exactly what each variant is communicating.
5. Make navigation predictable and purposeful
Navigation is not just a menu, it is the mental model users build of your product. Predictable navigation means users can guess where to find things without trial and error, which speeds up discovery and reduces frustration.
Purposeful navigation goes further by aligning menu items with the actions that matter for your business, such as requesting a quote or starting a free trial. In ecommerce, it might prioritise high margin categories or curated collections that convert well, rather than mirroring internal organisation charts.
6. Provide feedback, states and error recovery
Users should never be left wondering whether an action worked or whether data was lost. Good UX design provides immediate feedback through loading states, confirmations and inline validation that explains what is happening.
Error states are an opportunity to keep users on track, not a punishment. Clear error messages that explain what went wrong and how to fix it, ideally without losing progress, can dramatically reduce abandonment in forms and complex flows.
7. Optimize for speed across devices
Slow experiences kill conversion and engagement, especially on mobile or weaker connections. Performance is a UX concern as much as an engineering one, because delays change how users perceive the product and how many steps they are willing to complete.
UX design teams should collaborate closely with developers to set performance budgets and test key journeys on real devices. Resources like the Webflow speed optimisation guide show how design choices around media, layout and scripts affect Core Web Vitals and, in turn, business metrics.
8. Build trust with content, microcopy and UX writing
Trust is built through consistent, transparent communication at every step of the journey. UX writing that explains pricing, delivery, data use and next steps clearly reduces anxiety and improves conversion, particularly in high ticket or B2B contexts.
Microcopy around forms, error states and security can reassure users that they are making a good decision and that their data is safe. For product and growth teams, investing in this content layer is often cheaper than adding more features, yet it can unlock disproportionate gains.
9. Validate UX design with experiments and analytics
Even experienced teams cannot predict perfectly how users will respond to every change. Treating UX design decisions as hypotheses to be tested through A/B tests, cohort analysis and usability studies keeps you honest and focused on real impact.
Instrumenting key flows with analytics events and dashboards allows you to see how changes affect activation, task completion and revenue over time. This closes the loop between UX design and growth, turning qualitative ideas into measurable experiments.
10. Treat UX design as an ongoing process, not a project
User expectations, competitors and technologies change constantly, so a one off redesign will not keep a product competitive for long. High performing teams bake UX design into their regular planning cycles, with space for discovery, testing and iteration each quarter.
This continuous approach avoids painful, expensive overhauls by addressing issues as they appear, informed by fresh data and feedback. It also makes it easier to align UX work with wider marketing and product roadmaps, a model that matches how 6th Man runs ongoing growth engagements rather than one time projects.
UX design process for modern product teams
A simple UX design process helps teams move from insights to shipped improvements without getting lost in theory. The steps below fit well with agile development and give founders and marketing leads a clear view of how discovery, design and testing connect to growth.
Discovery and research with real users and data
Discovery starts with understanding user goals, contexts and constraints through interviews, surveys and support conversations. At the same time, product analytics and heatmaps reveal where users are dropping off or getting stuck, highlighting the areas with the highest potential upside.
This dual approach lets UX design teams prioritise work based on both user pain and business impact. Rather than guessing, you can identify a shortlist of journeys to improve, such as first time setup, pricing exploration or repeat purchase.
Ideation, flows and information architecture
Once problems are understood, teams brainstorm solutions and sketch alternative flows that might reduce friction. These ideas are turned into user journey maps and sitemap level structures that clarify what pages or screens exist and how they connect.
Information architecture work ensures that navigation, categories and labels match how users think, not internal terminology. Doing this early saves time later, because it avoids building entire sections that are hard to discover or do not align with real user tasks.
Wireframes, prototypes and usability testing
Wireframes translate flows into concrete layouts without getting stuck on visual details too early. Teams then create interactive prototypes for key journeys such as signup, onboarding and checkout so that stakeholders and users can click through realistic scenarios.
Short usability sessions, even with a handful of participants, reveal confusing elements, missing information and unexpected behaviours. Capturing both qualitative feedback and simple task success rates makes it easier to decide what to change before designs reach development.
This step protects engineering capacity and ensures that UX design decisions are validated with real users. It also builds confidence across stakeholders, since everyone can see proposed changes in action before committing budget.
Continuous improvement after launch
Launch is the beginning of a new feedback loop, not the end of UX design work. Post launch, teams should monitor key metrics, watch user behaviour recordings and collect feedback through surveys or NPS prompts embedded in the product.
Patterns from this data inform the next round of discovery and prioritisation, keeping the process cyclical. Many 6th Man clients use this ongoing loop across their websites, webshops and custom apps to maintain momentum instead of waiting for the next big redesign.
UX design deliverables, tools and examples
Stakeholders often ask what they will actually receive from UX design work and which tools are involved. Deliverables, software and real world examples make the discipline tangible, and they provide artefacts that marketing, product and development teams can all use.
Core UX deliverables stakeholders should expect
Core deliverables turn research and strategy into assets that guide build and optimisation work. They should be clear enough that non designers can understand and use them in planning and prioritisation meetings.
Common UX design deliverables include journey maps, site maps, annotated wireframes, interactive prototypes and test reports. For growth teams, experiment backlogs and post test debriefs are especially valuable, because they connect UX work directly to hypotheses and metrics.
- User journey maps that show each step from acquisition to activation.
- Information architecture diagrams or sitemaps for websites and webshops.
- Annotated wireframes that explain key interactions and content hierarchy.
- Prototype links that stakeholders can click through and comment on.
- Usability test summaries with clear findings and prioritised recommendations.
These artefacts create a shared source of truth across design, marketing and development. They also make it easier to brief external partners, as seen in many of the 6th Man case studies where strong UX documentation accelerated delivery.
Popular UX design tools and software
Modern UX design relies on a mix of research, design and collaboration tools rather than a single platform. For early stage teams, the priority is choosing UX design software that supports quick iteration and easy sharing with stakeholders.
Tools like Figma dominate interface design and prototyping because they enable real time collaboration between designers, developers and marketers. Complementary tools for analytics, screen recording and surveys capture behavioural and attitudinal data that feeds into ongoing UX design decisions.
UX design examples that move key metrics
Effective UX design examples rarely involve flashy visuals, instead they focus on targeted improvements in high leverage journeys. Reducing the number of fields in a quote request form, clarifying delivery information on a product page or adding progress indicators to onboarding can each produce measurable gains.
In one B2B case, a streamlined navigation and clearer content hierarchy on a marketing site, similar to work in the MDH website redesign case study, reduced bounce rate and increased demo requests. For ecommerce, UX changes to category structure and checkout flow, as seen in the Kramon webshop project, often deliver double digit lifts in conversion without extra ad spend.
UX responsibilities, skills and collaboration in your team
In small and mid sized companies, UX design often sits across multiple roles, even if you do not have a full time specialist yet. Understanding the core responsibilities and skills involved helps founders and marketing leads decide whether to hire, upskill or work with an embedded partner.
Who owns UX design in a small or mid sized company
Ownership depends on stage and team composition, but someone senior should be accountable for overall user experience outcomes. That person might be a product owner, a marketing lead or a dedicated UX designer, but they need the authority to influence roadmaps and priorities.
In many SMEs, UX design sits at the intersection of marketing and product, since it affects acquisition and retention equally. Partners like 6th Man’s marketing team on demand can temporarily assume this ownership role, bringing in senior expertise without the cost of a full in house hire.
Key UX skills founders and marketing leads should understand
Even if you do not practice UX design daily, understanding the core skills involved makes you a better collaborator and decision maker. This knowledge also helps you evaluate candidates, agencies and any UX design course you consider, so you can invest wisely.
Important skills span research, strategy, interaction design and analytics, with a growing need to connect UX work to commercial results. Being able to read funnels, interpret test results and tie UX changes to revenue is more valuable than knowing every niche tool.
Key capabilities include user research and interviewing to uncover real needs, plus information architecture and interaction design to structure products effectively. Copywriting and UX writing, analytics literacy and strong collaboration habits round out the toolkit that supports impactful UX design, whether someone holds a formal UX design job or a hybrid role.
These capabilities underpin strong outcomes regardless of title. Leaders who grasp them can steer teams away from surface level tweaks and toward impactful, user centric improvements that support growth targets.
How UX designers collaborate with product, dev and marketing
UX designers are most effective when embedded in cross functional squads that include product, engineering and marketing. This setup reduces handoffs and allows UX considerations to shape decisions about features, technical implementation and go to market plans from the start.
For example, a UX designer might partner with marketing to design high converting landing pages, supported by the frameworks in the landing page development service, while working with developers to ensure forms, tracking and performance match expectations. Regular rituals like design reviews and shared dashboards keep everyone aligned on the same metrics.
When to bring in an external UX design partner
At some point, DIY efforts reach their limit and an external UX design partner can accelerate progress. The right moment is usually when you see persistent funnel problems, growing technical complexity or a need to scale experiments faster than your internal team allows.
Signals that you have a UX problem, not a traffic problem
If you are already investing in SEO, paid media or sales outreach and still see low conversion, UX is a likely culprit. Metrics like high bounce on key pages, strong click through rates but weak on site engagement or sharp drop offs at specific funnel steps point to experience issues rather than awareness.
Frequent support tickets about basic tasks, such as finding pricing or completing checkout, are another warning sign. When internal debates about the website or app focus on visual tweaks instead of user problems and data, you may benefit from an external view grounded in UX design principles.
What a lean embedded UX partner like 6th Man Digital does differently
A lean partner slots into your team as a senior UX design function that is tightly integrated with acquisition, analytics and engineering. Instead of delivering static reports, they help you prioritise opportunities, redesign high impact flows and set up experiments that tie directly to revenue and retention.
Because 6th Man combines UX design with services like search engine advertising and marketing automation, recommendations are grounded in a full funnel view. This embedded model gives SMEs access to the kind of multidisciplinary UX and growth capability that larger companies only achieve with multiple in house hires.
Talk to 6th Man Digital about UX design
How to start a UX design project focused on growth
If your product is leaking conversions, activation or retention, start with a focused, time boxed engagement that ties UX work directly to a measurable business goal. A lean, outcome driven UX project should surface why users drop off, propose high impact fixes, validate them with experiments, and hand over production ready deliverables for engineering and marketing.
For busy founders and marketing leads, a clear sequence of steps keeps the project controlled and predictable while still leaving space for insight and iteration. The outline below reflects how 6th Man typically structures UX design work inside growth engagements.
- Signal assessment, collect quantitative signals first, such as funnel drop off, heatmaps and session recordings, then layer qualitative insights from support tickets and a short set of user interviews.
- Define the North Star, pick one metric to move first, for example activation rate, checkout completion or trial to paid conversion, and align stakeholders on success criteria and timeframe.
- Run a rapid discovery sprint, one to two weeks of lightweight research, journey mapping and hypothesis generation. Consider a Sprint 0 audit to prioritise SEO and product gaps quickly, see Sprint 0 for examples.
- Prototype and test, build low fidelity wireframes or interactive prototypes and validate with five to ten usability tests or an A/B experiment on a representative landing page or flow.
- Ship minimum delight, implement the highest leverage changes first, instrument analytics, and run controlled experiments to measure impact. Use conversion focused templates and landing page development where applicable.
- Iterate with data, treat UX work as a continuous loop: observe, hypothesise, test, ship, measure. Capture results in regular reports and feed learnings into product and marketing roadmaps.
When you want speed without sacrificing senior experience, a lean embedded partner can plug into your team, own the research and experimentation cadence, and translate design work into measurable CRO and retention wins. 6th Man works with product and marketing teams to deliver designs that are buildable, testable and tied to KPIs, and the team can also deliver production sites and landing pages when needed.
Case Studies | 6th Man | Effective Landing Page Development | Sprint 0
Ready to turn UX design into a growth channel, not just a checklist? Start with a focused project that prioritises measurable outcomes and fast learning, and you will see improvements in conversion, retention and product adoption within weeks.
Strong UX design drives higher conversion, lower churn and more efficient acquisition by making your product easier to find, easier to use and easier to buy. If you want pragmatic UX design that moves real business metrics, Contact | 6th Man to discuss a growth oriented UX engagement and next steps.
