The Obvious and Not-So-Obvious Costs of Bad UX

Imagine a world where your favourite app crashes every time you try to use it, or your online shopping cart mysteriously empties just as you’re about to hit “purchase.” Frustrating, right?

This is what happens when businesses fall victim to poor user experience (UX) design.

UX design isn’t just about making things look good. It’s about how things work, and how it makes your users feel. And when things don’t work, it’s frustrating — for both users and business owners. Over time, those frustrations turn into real costs, not just the ones you can see immediately but hidden ones that sneak up on you and impact your business in ways you might not expect.

We’ve all been there — stuck on an app or website that is so hard to use, making what should be a simple task feel like an uphill battle. But while users can walk away and move on, the business is left to deal with the consequences of bad UX. Some effects are obvious, but others quietly build up in the background and affect your bottom line.

Here’s one that you may notice quickly, but it only scratches the surface of a much bigger issue:

High bounce rates or abandoned carts

It’s no surprise that when a digital product is hard to use, people leave. If your users can’t figure out how to navigate your app or website, they’ll move on to someone else’s. Abandoned shopping carts and high bounce rates are immediate consequences of bad UX, and they directly impact revenue. But that’s not all.

Here’s where the hidden costs creep in.

Loss of customer’s trust

Users may not explicitly think, “Oh, I don’t trust this company because their website is hard to use.” But when tasks that should be simple become difficult, or when people leave a website feeling the experience was negative, they remember how you made them feel. They might question whether your business truly understands their needs. Or worse, they might feel you don’t care enough to invest in making their experience better.

When people have a less than stellar experience interacting with your product, the less likely they are to return, recommend it, or explore other offerings from your company. Trust, when lost, is hard to regain. Even if you eventually fix the issues, customers often only remember the negative experience for a long time. This is because humans are wired to pay more attention to negative experiences than positive ones.

Weak branding or damaged reputation

Think about the apps you love to use. Chances are, they’re easy, intuitive, and maybe even enjoyable because they help you get things done efficiently. Now, think about the ones that drive you crazy — the ones where you don’t understand what’s going on, can’t tell where to click first, or can’t easily find what you need. Bad UX doesn’t just slow people down; it creates friction that stops them from accomplishing their goals.

No amount of fancy logo design, clever marketing campaigns, or high number of likes on social media can undo the frustration users feel if they can’t achieve what they came for. And when your brand becomes known for poor usability, the damage here is a tarnished reputation that can ripple through word of mouth and online reviews, making it difficult to recover in the long run.

Rising customer support costs

If a product or service disrupts a user’s goal or wastes their time, the emotional toll is much higher, reinforcing the memory of the bad experience. The result is often either a flood of customer queries or they would quickly look for alternative solutions. For the former, your support team ends up spending countless hours troubleshooting problems that could have been avoided with better UX. If it’s the latter, then you have just handed your precious prospects or customers to your competitors. Over time, this drains resources and increases operational costs — all for issues that could have been avoided if there was proper UX design put in place.

Development rework and misguided investments

When bad UX goes unchecked, expensive rework is inevitable. We’ve done a few projects where we audited a digital platform which was launched without any professional UX input. We identified major areas where the user experience is lacking, which explained why the founder was receiving negative feedback from his customers. The founder eventually hired us to revamp their platform UX design.

To illustrate further, you might launch a new feature only to realise that the foundation isn’t strong because the original design didn’t focus enough on user needs in the first place. At this point, fixing usability issues requires not just time but a significant rework on the whole platform’s experience design, which is a substantial time and financial investment — far more than it would have cost to get it right from the start.

But rework isn’t the only problem. Poor UX can also lead to building features no one asked for, while ignoring the ones users actually need. You end up spending time and resources on flashy elements that don’t solve real problems, instead of investing in the functionality that would make a genuine difference in the user experience. This misalignment drains development budgets and leaves you with a product that feels out of touch with what your audience wants.

How can you avoid these costs?

Now that we’ve looked at the hidden costs of bad UX, let’s explore solutions! The good news is that these pitfalls are entirely avoidable with the right approach. Here are five recommended steps:

#1 Invest early in UX design

Hire in-house UX professionals or an external UX design agency who don’t just create something visually appealing. Experienced and well trained UX practitioners ensure your product meets real user needs through well-researched, user-centred designs. UX professionals bring a deep understanding of user behaviour and design principles, helping businesses move beyond assumptions to make data-driven, user-tested decisions. Their expertise in user research and mapping research findings ensures that you build a product that will meet your users’ real needs and enable you to differentiate from your competitors.

#2 Incorporate user testing

This is where many businesses slip up because user tests give the impression that it will require a lot of time and resources. But it can be done efficiently when you have experienced UX practitioners. Test your designs early and often with concept tests, low fidelity or high fidelity tests, or usability tests. Testing with only a handful of real people is still better than none because these tests can surface potential problems that the product team may have not considered, or highlight important gaps in assumptions which we can still rectify before it is too late.

#3 Iterate, don’t assume

You need to continuously iterate based on feedback, staying engaged with your users as their needs evolve. One of the best ways to stay connected to your users and gain their feedback is through regular testing and feedback loops. Creating simple prototypes and putting them in the hands of real users will help you identify pain points before they become major issues.Another effective approach is conducting user interviews or user tests at key stages of development. This gives you a direct line to what’s working and what isn’t, so you can adapt. The more you engage users throughout the design process, the better equipped you’ll be to create a product that truly meets their needs — not just what you think they need.

#4 Hire the right UX experts

Hiring experienced UX designers who truly understand both your business goals and your users’ needs can prevent costly mistakes before they even happen. But here’s the thing: with UX being such a buzzword, there are plenty of people out there claiming they “do UX” because it’s trending. But not everyone has the depth of expertise to deliver the results your business needs.

So how do you spot the professionals from the phonies? A true UX expert will be able to explain the research and thought process behind their design decisions and demonstrate how their work met real user needs and drove business goals. They go beyond surface-level tweaks and focus on solving real user problems with data and insights.

On the other hand, someone just jumping on the bandwagon will often rely on generic design principles or talk mostly about aesthetics. They may lack depth in understanding user behaviour or fail to involve actual users in the design process. They might be great at throwing around UX jargon but won’t have the expertise to back it up with meaningful results.

Conclusion

We live in an age where users expect digital experiences to be smooth, fast, and intuitive. When something works well, it’s seen as the baseline expectation. But when something doesn’t work as expected, it stands out as a failure. This mismatch between expectation and reality creates a sense of disappointment, making the bad experience more memorable. So the damage done by bad UX design inevitably will hurt the bottom line.

Ultimately, good UX isn’t just a design concern — it’s a business strategy. And for those who get it right, the returns of investing in good UX is a loyal user base, efficient operations, increase in user engagement and even growth in user acquisition, because you have built a brand or a product that people trust.

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Wendy is a seasoned UX researcher and UX UI designer with a deep passion for human-centred design. With nearly two decades of experience in design, she has not only led creative teams but also started design companies from scratch, nurturing them to become fully operational. Her approach is grounded in empathy, advocating what makes good UX is addressing human needs, the key to unlocking effective problem-solving.