Why UI/UX can absolutely make or break a product, and how you can fix your approach to net much higher levels of both engagement and conversion.

Overview

You did it, you designed a whole product from the ground-up. It’s big, beautiful, the offer is robust, the landing page is sexy, and…nothing.

Advertising, signage, slogans, appeals to your customers galore and they still just aren’t biting, or maybe they’re interested at first, but they’re not staying. What can you honestly do about that?

Today I’m going to share with you why your product isn’t selling, despite your best efforts, and how you can fix your approach to net much higher levels of both engagement and conversion.

The #1 reason you’re not getting sales

Simply put, bar-none the reason your product is not selling the way that you want it to is because:

Your solution does not connect people to their desired results effectively or falls short of their expectations.

Boom, that’s it. There can be a lot of other tertiary things that can be cited, but at the end of the day, if your solution doesn’t truly connect people with what they need and want in a way that meets their expectations, they don’t care.

Let’s unpack this a little so we can understand this in a more holistic fashion.

Connecting people to their desired results

People don’t inherently care about our solutions. They don’t care about our UI, UX, processes, offers, pitches, marketing tactics, or methods of communication. All they care about is:

Eliminating their pain, or creating pleasure, usually in that order.

1. Pain is addressed by the mind first, because it’s painful (we all know what that means), then once pain has been eliminated or reduced to a high enough degree that it is tolerable, pleasure will be addressed.
2. The only exception to this rule is when people firmly believe that their pain cannot be fixed, there is no adequate solution for it, or they are not experiencing pain currently, in which case they will use pleasure in an effort to escape the pain.

The problem with “solutions”

Most “solutions” don’t actually solve anything. They offer steps and processes towards an outcome that the user fundamentally does not care about.

• It’s a dentist doing a cleaning when you really need a root canal and a crown.
• It’s a cab taking you to the wrong location.
• It’s the wrong substitution on your order that you just drove to pick up.
• It’s like trying to cash a bad check.

It violates the fundamental rules of actually being a solution:

• It falls short of a user’s expectations and,
• It doesn’t actually solve their problems.

So what can we honestly do about this? How can we fully address this so that our solutions actually do?

Focus on practical outcomes

When designing a solution, don’t focus on process first; process is secondary.

No, what you want to focus on is declarative, there-it-is, “this is what it should look like, and this is how the user should feel,” outcomes.

Identify first and foremost these key things:

1. How does your user currently feel?
2. How does your user want to feel?
3. What is causing them the most pain?
4. What outcome(s) would alleviate the most pain for them?

Once you know that, you’re ready to begin crafting a conceptual solution, this is where process comes in, the “how” questions:

• “How can we reasonably get a user from where they are to where they want to be?”
• “How can we do that conveniently, efficiently, and effectively?”
• “How can we clearly communicate with our users that we understand their pain, and articulate directly that we have a solution that is guaranteed to work for their pain specifically?”
• “How can we make sure the user is over-the-moon, expectations completely blown past and exceeded into the stratosphere?”
• “How can we make sure a user feels cared enough about and is supported enough to stick around for continuous value?”
• “How will we deliver this continuous value?”
• etc, etc, etc.

The bottom line

You see what I’m talking about. Your OUTCOMES sell your product, nothing else. People buy based on emotion, but any warm and fuzzy feelings of perceived value will quickly turn to bitter resentment for an overpriced, under-delivering “solution,” that doesn’t actually get them where they want to go.

Cue refunds, cue bad reviews, cue rolling lost revenue, cue chapter 11.

Avoid this at all costs. Your focus when getting you product to sell, or to pivot from a non-selling product to a selling product, is to understand exactly what your customer’s expectations are, and what outcomes they are trying to achieve with your solution.

From there, figure out what first, then how, then execute.

Nick Lawrence Design
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