It's time to stand out.
By: Russ
Estimated length: 8 minutes
Time to max your sticky note budget.
In my experience, user experience (UX) is one of the most overlooked parts of website design and development. When it’s done well, it pays off fast—yet it’s still wildly underused.
So what is it? In the simplest terms, UX is the practice of studying how people use something so we can remove friction and make it easier to use. That’s an over-simplification (UX is a whole discipline), but we’re here to get our feet wet, not set a depth record.
Think of UX as the psychology side of design. It helps us account for the quirks and constraints of real humans. We might build something that works great for us, but users may arrive stressed, distracted, on a small screen, dealing with a disability, or lacking the background knowledge we take for granted. UX methods are how you surface those realities before they become expensive surprises.
We never get it right the first time
Humans are complicated, and many of us build as if they aren’t. When we set out to make a product (like a website), we follow the basics and the common rules. The job doesn’t end there, though—because human behaviour comes with a steady supply of unexpected hitches.
The people building the site also see it through lenses that skew judgement. We’ve lived with the website from day one (as an owner, employee, designer, or developer), so we’re comfortable with it in ways first‑time visitors simply won’t be. Your understanding of the business is in a different atmosphere than someone who discovered you existed 30 seconds ago.
That gap creates blind spots: we predict one behaviour, users do another. UX is the toolset we use to find those gaps and close them.
I’ve been building websites for over a decade, and I can say with confidence that the number of projects that launch perfectly—then never need a single adjustment—is zero. Great projects still iterate. That’s not because the team is incompetent; it’s because problems rarely have only one angle. You have to pick things up, turn them around, and look again. Often, the users are the ones who show you what you missed. They provide the roadmap.
Examples of what UX work can look like
One reason “what is UX” posts are tricky is that UX is huge. People build entire careers around one slice of it: research, information architecture, wireframing, interaction design, visual design, usability testing—you name it.
Here are a few common UX activities you can build into a typical website process.
Gather feedback from target customers
Getting to know your users is overlooked far more often than you’d expect. The simple act of talking to them—and asking a few pointed questions—can dramatically improve your plan.
Already have a site and want to start without running a full research project? Ask around internally for patterns you’ve heard more than once. If someone in your organisation deals with complaints or support, they can be a goldmine.
Organise your content
No matter the size of the site, content gets overwhelming quickly. A simple strategy is to map everything out with sticky notes on a wall so you can see the whole system at once. Even a small perspective shift can make it obvious where content should move, merge, or be renamed.
Use prototypes
Change is just a fancy pen stroke away.
If you’re early in planning, prototypes are one of the highest‑impact tools you can use because they’re flexible and cheap to change. A prototype can be as basic as a paper layout made from cut‑out “buttons” and “sections.”
Bring in 10 people. Notice none of them can find the products? Physically move the “About Us” button and replace it with “Shop Products.” Bring in 10 more. See if the issue persists.
Prototypes aren’t only for early planning, either. Sometimes, instead of building a full new layout for a client, I’ll mock something up quickly in a design tool so they can click through it. It isn’t a working site, but it looks like one. That small step often saves everyone time by revealing pitfalls before they’re coded.
Watch users use the site and note pain points
This is one of the most eye‑opening exercises for developers and business owners alike. Watching someone stumble through your website in ways you never imagined is both humbling and extremely useful.
This is where you find out the call‑out you thought was “obvious” is invisible, or the contact form on your homepage leaves people unsure whether anything went through.
A simple version of the process looks like this:
- Bring in a participant and give them a device.
- Record the session (with consent).
- Give them tasks such as:
- “Pretend you’re here to buy a lamp—what do you do first?”
- “Pretend you have a question about product colours—how would you find the answer?”
The key is to avoid leading the participant. You don’t want to ask questions that accidentally coach them toward the “right” answer (for example, overemphasising the same words used in your navigation).
Run A/B tests
A/B testing compares two options to see which performs better. Large companies do this constantly—sometimes down to tiny details, like button colour or microcopy. (It also helps explain why your Facebook feed might not match your friend’s.)
You can keep A/B tests simple. Want to know whether “Our Products” gets more clicks than “Buy Today”? Test them against each other and see what the data says.
There are plenty more ways to evaluate a website, but these are some of the most common. Ideally, you build with these practices in mind from the start. If you already have a site, you can still run most of them and improve what you’ve got.
The advantages are obvious if you pay attention
As far as ROI goes, UX is pretty good.
Businesses often struggle to measure the return on “soft” investments. Social media is the classic example: you’re told you should be on it, but it’s hard to see the needle move in a way that feels direct and undeniable. Today’s connection might pay off in a year, or never.
UX doesn’t have to be like that. You can run exercises, gather evidence, and watch sites improve in real time. You can serve half your users one version of a button and half another, then measure which actually helps people move forward.
So what’s the hold‑up?
Despite the benefits, UX still struggles to gain traction in smaller organisations. Big companies buy into it every day, but it takes longer to trickle down. A few reasons:
We don’t plan for the post‑launch phase. Many people see a website project as having a beginning, middle, and end. But a website isn’t a poster—it’s more like a vehicle. Buying it is one moment in the ownership timeline. Maintenance and iteration are part of the deal (even if nobody enjoys that sentence).
We also overestimate our ability to understand our customers. This is one reason business owners often want to write all the copy themselves (a separate topic, but still relevant). Discovering we’re wrong can feel like personal failure, so we avoid the feedback that would correct the course.
The truth is, the people willing to be wrong have the best chance of being right—because websites rarely launch perfectly.
In conclusion
Very few people do this well.
A pattern I see with potential clients is that everyone wants to “stand out.” They want to be unique. Then they turn around and do what everyone else is doing. That’s standard human behaviour. It’s uncomfortable to go it alone.
Most websites you see are the first pass, and they stay that way. That’s the opportunity. Iterate when others don’t.
UX doesn’t need to be complicated or expensive. The returns are often rapid and clear when it’s done properly. So give it a shot. Dip a toe in. You’ll be glad you did.