All UX issues are conversion issues

Before you take the headline of this article at face value, take a moment to think about what it means. Believe it or not, I had a similar reaction to an Instagram post with text that read:

Every UX issue is a conversion issue.
Not every conversion issue is a UX issue.

Surely not! My brain immediately compiled a veritable smorgasbord of hot takes and quips to throw in the direction of the poster about what nonsense this post was daring to so openly announce. But I stopped, just for a moment, and I took a few seconds to actually think about it.

What if every UX issue is a conversion issue?

Before we just throw our toys out of the pram at whatever nonsense this is, let’s take some time to break down what is being said here. Specifically that first sentence: “Every UX issue is a conversion issue”.

Traditionally I would view a ‘conversion’ as a user getting to the end of a sales funnel and making a purchase, the process of converting a potential customer into a buyer of your product. Getting someone to buy your thing. But this is a purely sales-based type of conversion. What if your product isn’t about generating a sale? What are your goals for your users?

What is a conversion if not a sale?

Over the past few years, I’ve been working in government and local council departments where we’re building services for the public to use, and internal systems to help civil servants do their jobs. Neither of these audiences is there to be ‘converted’ in a sales sense. However, conversions still exist as a way of measuring the success of your product.

Let’s try to move away from the eCommerce perspective and break down what a ‘conversion’ involves from a user’s point of view.

If an eCommerce conversion is taking a prospective customer from point A - the beginning of their journey - to completing a purchase at point B, then what does that look like when it doesn’t involve a sale?

If we remove the context of this sales example, we can strip a conversion back to getting a user from point A to point B.

A conversion is successfully moving a user from point A to point B

Getting from A to B

Although you may be picturing point A as the very start of a user’s journey, and point B as the very end of it, these start and end points can actually be used more arbitrarily within a wider user journey context.

For example, learning to drive is one big journey starting with not being able to drive at point A and ending with being able to drive at point B. But this one journey is made up of a number of smaller journeys; checking you’re allowed to drive, getting a provisional licence, taking driving lessons, preparing for your theory test, taking your theory test, taking your driving test, and when you’ve passed both you can now legally drive! 🎉

Each of these smaller journeys has to be completed in order for you to complete the overall journey. Each is a smaller conversion than the whole, taking you from a starting point to an end point where you successfully reach the goal.

You can then break each of those smaller journeys into even smaller journeys. For example, learning to drive is about learning and perfecting all the things that come together to be able to drive a vehicle; How to accelerate and brake, how to change gears, learn to be aware of potential dangers, how to turn corners, and so on.

You can then break each of those down further, but I think you get the picture.

Is every UX issue really a conversion issue?

Now we have a different perspective of what a conversion is, let’s think about whether every UX issue is a conversion issue.

Obviously, we can’t go through every possible problem, so let’s use some examples to see if we can uncover if every UX issue is really a conversion issue.

A public user on a learning platform

Staying away from the monetary type of conversion, let’s dive into a learning platform; we’ll take Duolingo as an example.

A user’s goal will be to learn a language of their choice. The overarching goal might be to become fluent in that particular language or perhaps just be able to hold a conversation. The user achieving either one of those could be measured as a conversion.

Duolingo is a great example of the use of gamification to enhance the user experience and to encourage the user to continue along their path to complete their goal, to complete that conversion.

An internal user on an internal system

Surely we can’t possibly think of conversions when people are doing the day-to-day jobs on internal software systems?

Why not? Every task that someone might have to do on an internal system could be seen as a conversion. From updating a customer’s contact details, through processing payments, to dealing with complaints, every one of these tasks can be measured in a way that will help us to understand how efficiently the users can complete those tasks.

Apply the user-centred design process to any of these tasks and you’ll be aiming to improve those efficiencies, to make the user’s experience better (even though it’s their job), ultimately resulting in better conversion rates for those tasks.

Conversion is everywhere in UX design!

Ultimately UX is about conversion

Improving any aspect of the user experience is ultimately aiming to help the user to complete their goal, to make that conversion of getting them from point A to point B.

The better the experience, the more chance you have of higher conversion rates, whatever way you’re measuring them.

If UX and business go hand in hand, then UX has to lead to conversions and therefore it makes sense for the business to continue investing in user-centred design.

Do you disagree?

Are there any examples that you can think of that aren’t related to a conversion of some kind in the end?