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A client doesn’t want to pay for user research? Here’s how to change their mind.
‘We don’t need user research’ is a phrase all designers dread to hear.
User research is critical for every design project. I know it, you know it, but our clients don’t always know it.
Whether you are a freelancer or working in an agency, convincing clients to invest time in UX might be the most challenging part of the job. People often prefer to see a pretty UI fast.
Although we know proper user research is imperative for project success, making our clients understand that is a different story.
I’ve had this problem numerous times as a project/product manager in an agency setting.
There are three tactics I learned along the way.
1. Change the narration: It’s about hitting business goals.
Don’t try to sell understanding users. Ultimately, understanding users for the sake of understanding them is not that useful.
All the client cares about is achieving business outcomes. They want to increase revenue, reduce costs, improve core KPIs, etc.
So, instead of telling them how important it is to understand users, explain how research can help hit business objectives.
One phrase I used recently was more or less like this:
Given our limited budget, I don’t think we can afford to skip the research. Proper research triples our chances of hitting our goal of increasing user engagement. We can either build 3 features out of thin air and hope, with a low chance, that they’ll drive engagement or spend some time on research and build 2 features with a way higher probability of driving the engagement.
There’s nothing about understanding users — it’s not what matters. It’s all about outcomes, risks and money.
Next time you try to convince your client to invest in user research, sell them potential outcomes, not enigmatic user understanding.
