"I honestly don't see the point of spending so much money on design and usability." An executive considering a website redesign recently told us this. He could understand design fees for a printed flyer, but paying hundreds of thousands of yen for screen usability felt unintuitive. His sentiment is completely understandable. UX is hard to see, and feeling that something has "improved" is difficult. That is why in many small and medium-sized businesses, UX improvements remain permanently relegated to the back burner under "when we have extra budget."
Yet while it is put off, poor usability quietly continues to generate costs. The problem is that this loss never arrives as an itemized invoice. Rather than discussing how to construct specific buttons or forms, this article structures for decision-makers why to invest in UX improvements and how to measure the results through the lens of metrics and customer understanding. The ROI of UX is actively discussed internationally as well; Smashing Magazine's Ten Data-Backed Truths Of User Experience ROI demonstrates with data that UX investment is not merely about aesthetics, but links directly to business metrics.
Why UX investment gets deprioritized
The reason UX improvement gets deprioritized is structural rather than an issue of team negligence. There are three primary reasons.
First, the effects are delayed. Launching an ad campaign brings traffic the next day, but usability improvements work gradually by steadily reducing abandonment and increasing inquiries. The larger the time lag between investment and return, the more likely people are to postpone investing.
Second, the pain is dispersed. If a few out of every hundred users give up and abandon an unusable site, each person leaves in complete silence. Because this friction does not consolidate into complaints in one place, leadership never receives a palpable sense that people are struggling. Prospective customers who drop off midway through an inquiry form never return, quietly dissolving into aggregate metrics.
Third, the illusion that "it works, so there is no problem." The site renders properly and orders come through. Consequently, people conclude that "not broken = no improvement needed." However, "functioning" and "usable" are completely different things, and that gap represents lost business opportunity. This illusion also ties directly to shallow customer understanding, discussed below.
Where losses occur when UX is neglected
When making decisions about UX investment, the first thing to understand before "how to make it better" is what you lose by neglecting it. Discussions around investment tend to focus on potential upside, but what truly resonates with project owners is recognizing what is currently leaking away unseen. Losses predominantly appear across the following four areas.
| Area of loss | What is happening | Why it is hard to see |
|---|---|---|
| Conversions (inquiries and purchases) | Users giving up midway and dropping off accumulate | Departing users leave silently, so losses remain invisible |
| Support and customer service | Inquiries arrive via phone and email due to confusing interfaces | Appears to be a staffing issue, written off as "we're just busy" |
| Return visits and retention (LTV) | Users who experience poor usability once never return | Users who stop visiting vanish from the metrics entirely |
| Brand reputation and trust | Leaves the impression of an unpolished, careless company | Impressions are hard to quantify and rarely articulated |
Support costs and customer lifetime value (LTV) are particularly prone to being overlooked. An interface that is not self-explanatory prompts inquiries asking "how do I do this?", sapping the time of staff members responding to them. Although this incurs clear payroll expenses, it is rarely linked back to UX deficiencies. The same holds true for LTV: given that acquiring new customers is considered substantially more expensive than retaining existing ones, customer churn caused by poor initial usability means forfeiting all future recurring revenue that could have been earned.
A well-known international case study involves a major retailer where customers were abandoning purchases in droves because account registration was mandatory; simply changing the registration button to "Continue to Checkout" to permit guest purchases dramatically increased sales. A single point of friction was leaking that much opportunity. Similar friction points lurk across the forms and user journeys of many SMB websites, varying only in scale. The structural reasons why inquiries fail to grow are also detailed in How to Fix a Website That Generates No Inquiries.
How to measure impact: Pre- and post-launch KPIs
"If we invest, we want to see the impact in numbers"—a completely reasonable request. Measuring UX ROI falters when abstract usability is not translated into the vocabulary leadership cares about, such as revenue, inquiry volume, and response time. Conversely, once that translation is established upfront, results become measurable. In client engagements, we align with project owners on what to measure and how before starting work.
| Objective | Concrete metrics | Data source |
|---|---|---|
| Did drop-offs decrease? | Form completion rate, bounce rate, exit pages | GA4 / form analytics tools |
| Did user actions increase? | Inquiry volume, CVR, main funnel progression rate | GA4 / CRM |
| Did operational load decrease? | Volume of "how-to" support inquiries, response handling time | Support ticketing systems, internal records |
| Did engagement persist? | Return visit rate, repeat purchase rate, churn rate | GA4 / Order data |
There are two key points. First, always capture baseline metrics before starting revisions. Without a "before," you cannot demonstrate the margin of improvement in the "after." While fundamental GA4 navigation is covered in our GA4 Beginner's Guide, establishing current baseline figures for form completion rates and inquiry volumes prior to kickoff is essential. Second, isolate causality. To distinguish changes from seasonality or fluctuations in advertising spend, an experimental setup comparing isolated changes as detailed in Improving Websites with A/B Testing is effective, allowing you to clearly articulate how many additional inquiries were generated by a specific modification.
What deserves emphasis here is that UX ROI should be discussed not through flashy claims like "9,900%," but through grounded deltas measured within your company's own context. While generalized industry multipliers serve as useful references, what truly convinces stakeholders is how your own form completion rate moved as a direct result of the revision.
Elevating levels of customer understanding
Discussions about measuring impact often slide into "so we just need to track the numbers," but metrics represent only the tip of the iceberg. If you do not understand why those numbers exist, your next steps become pure guesswork. A valuable model here is the four levels of customer understanding highlighted in Smashing Magazine's Four Levels Of Customer Understanding. Originally developed by UX researcher Hannah Shamji, the framework categorizes customer understanding into four layers: what they say, what they think/feel, what they do, and why they do it.
Level 1, what they say, is easy to collect but represents the least reliable data due to opinions and social posturing. Answering "It's fine" to "Is it easy to use?" does not necessarily reflect genuine sentiment. Level 2, what they think and feel, reveals context through expectations and memories, but remains subject to personal interpretations. Only at Level 3, what they do, do unvarnished facts emerge, showing where users hesitated and which buttons they did not click. This is the layer observable via GA4 and session recording tools. Level 4, why they do it, represents the underlying motivations behind behaviors, which can only be grasped through observation, deep dialogue, and established trust.
The precision of UX investment is determined by how deeply into these layers your understanding reaches. Setting direction based solely on Level 1 surveys leaves you at the mercy of the loudest voices. Only when you cross-reference Level 3 behavioral data with Level 4 motivations can you gain confidence that addressing a specific issue will produce results. In client projects, it is common for different layers to contradict one another. A user saying "it's easy to use" while actually abandoning midway through—this contradiction is precisely where improvement opportunities are unearthed. Maximizing ROI is nothing other than eliminating guesswork revisions and focusing exclusively on changes validated at deeper layers.
Our process in client development
How do we actually proceed in client projects? We generally follow this progression. Rather than over-engineering from the outset, our foundational posture is to build a measurement baseline first, then focus investment where it yields impact.
- Gather baseline numbers: Measure pre-project metrics such as form completion rates, inquiry counts, and core user flow progression rates.
- Observe behavior: Identify where users stall as Level 3 facts using GA4 and session recordings.
- Investigate the "why": Uncover Level 4 underlying causes for stall points using the client's business domain expertise and user feedback.
- Target impactful revisions: Focus on high-ROI user pathways (forms, checkout, primary CTAs).
- Measure post-launch and report deltas: Compare against baseline numbers, translating and presenting how specific metrics moved as a result of the changes.
In an engagement supporting a web production firm (Company C), the project originated from concerns that their inquiry form completion rate was lower than expected. Level 3 observation revealed that abandonment during input was concentrated right before the confirmation screen. Digging into Level 4 revealed that the confirmation step made the input fields appear overwhelmingly long, inducing psychological fatigue. Simply revising how fields were presented and breaking the process into distinct stages improved completion rates and increased inquiry volume without increasing advertising spend. For the client, the calculation of how much was spent and how many inquiries were gained became transparent, simplifying future investment decisions. Form optimization is covered further in How to Approach Form Optimization (EFO).
Drawing the line to avoid over-investing
While we have advocated for investing in UX, UX is also an area that can be polished indefinitely. That is precisely why, as a client development partner standing on the client's side, we clearly define boundaries against over-investment. Return on investment is measured relative to the capital deployed; spending more does not automatically yield better results.
The decision criteria are simple: "If a user makes a mistake here, does money leak out directly?" Touchpoints like forms, checkout, and primary funnels—where failure translates directly into abandonment or lost inquiries—warrant robust investment. Conversely, polishing rarely visited explanatory pages or intricate decorative animations delivers minimal impact relative to cost. Funneling budget into these areas rapidly degrades ROI. Our role in client development is to discern where refinement works versus where it has negligible impact, steering the budget toward the former. Choosing a partner capable of saying "we can leave this for later" over one that insists on "making everything beautiful" ensures your investment ultimately pays off.
Pitfall
Finally, let us highlight common failures in UX investment. One is starting work without establishing baseline numbers. Concluding after a redesign that "it feels better" cannot justify a budget. Another is basing strategy entirely on Level 1 self-reported feedback, taking survey praise at face value while missing actual user drop-off. The most frequent pitfall is abandoning efforts midstream due to impatience with gradual results. Because UX improvements manifest progressively, expecting dramatic changes within a single month often leads to terminating investments prematurely before returns materialize. Aligning upfront on tracked metrics and observation timelines is the single best way to avoid these pitfalls.
Next steps to take
Decisions about UX investment should not be driven by vague optimism or sunk-cost reluctance; they must be grounded in data and customer understanding. There are two immediate steps to take. First, review your current form completion rates and inquiry counts right now. Without these, measuring impact will remain impossible. Second, conduct an initial audit of where customers are stalling. Once both elements are in place, meaningful discussions on where to direct investment can begin.
At GleamHub, we partner with clients in their investment decisions—from measurement and audits to targeted improvements on high-impact touchpoints and ongoing advisory support. We welcome the opportunity to help transform "I don't see the point in spending on usability" into "investing here cuts this exact amount of leakage." Even if you simply want help interpreting current metrics, please feel free to contact us.
Sources
- Ten Data-Backed Truths Of User Experience ROI — Smashing Magazine
- Four Levels Of Customer Understanding — Smashing Magazine
- Customer Lifetime Value (LTV) — ChartMogul
- How to Fix a Website That Generates No Inquiries
- GA4 Beginner's Guide
- Improving Websites with A/B Testing
- How to Approach Form Optimization (EFO)
- How to Approach Corporate Website Renewals
