How to Create Functional UX

Usually, when talking about user experience design, we think about how things look and work from the user's point of view. From this perspective, working on UX would mean answering some basic questions:

What steps does the user need to take to complete an action?

Are the transitions between particular stages of the app clear enough? Does it take long to sign up? It's all about making things easier for the user. But is that all?

The data suggests there's much more to it. You've probably seen the stat that every $1 invested in UX returns $100. It's widely cited, but it's worth being honest about: that figure is the upper end of a $2-to-$100 range, and its methodology has been questioned. 

More robust evidence tells a similar story, though. McKinsey's 2018 Design Index study tracked design-led companies over ten years and found they outperformed the S&P 500 by 219%. Forrester found that companies with superior customer experience grow revenue 5.1x faster than competitors. 

The exact multiplier varies, but the direction is consistent. UX isn't just about usability, it's a direct driver of business results.

Should UX designers take a wider approach and consider conversion optimisation as part of the UX design?

Understanding the app is crucial for users to complete their actions and to come back to your app. However, for some reason, the design process is turned upside down. 

Usually, UX design comes first, then comes the thought about optimising conversions – making it all easier for the user, more seamless, and more "to the point." In fact, this approach is just a waste of money and time. Instead of doing things twice, just do it right from the very beginning.

This idea wasn't always obvious. In the early 2010s, UX mostly meant wireframes, usability testing, and making things "look nice". Conversion was someone else's job. 

That started to change mid-decade when design thinking entered the C-suite and consultancies like McKinsey, Accenture, and Deloitte acquired design agencies to bring design closer to strategy. 

Then product-led growth, pioneered by companies like Slack, Dropbox, and Calendly, made the product experience itself the primary growth engine, and UX metrics became inseparable from business metrics. 

Today, "Product Designer" has largely replaced "UX Designer" as the dominant job title, reflecting this expanded scope. The argument this article makes, that UX and conversion are one discipline, was once a minority view. In 2026, it's the mainstream position. The real question now is how to do it well.

UX vs Conversion Rate Optimisation

The responsibility of every UX designer is to create something pleasant to use for the end user. 

Unfortunately, the fact that is missed more often than not is that user goals are (or at least should be) pretty much the same as app owner goals: converting in one way or another. Meanwhile, conversion optimisation is often neglected design-wise.

Think about buying clothes. When you walk into a store for a new shirt, it's not just the product itself that drives your purchase. It's how the shirt is displayed, how comfortable the changing room is, how flattering the lighting and mirrors are. 

Every detail in that environment is designed to move you closer to a purchase. You barely notice it because it all just feels right.

Your goal is to find what you're looking for and buy it. The store owner's goal is to sell it. Both sides want the same thing: a completed transaction. 

The more the owner invests in your comfort throughout the entire journey, from the moment you walk in to the moment you leave with a bag of new clothes, the higher the chances of closing that sale. Win-win.

Now, let's look at some web-based examples:

• LinkedIn - The core platform is easy to use: browsing profiles, sending messages, and posting content all feel smooth. But try setting up an ad campaign. The Campaign Manager interface is cluttered with confusing objective categories, unclear audience targeting options, and a budget setup that buries key choices behind multiple nested menus. It's like smoothing just half the path to the goal, and it's a real loss for both sides.

• Pinterest - Same story. The browsing and pinning experience is beautifully designed. But when you want to promote a pin, you're hit with an ad creation flow full of unclear pricing tiers, ambiguous bidding options, and payment settings that take far too many clicks to reach. Great UX stops right where the money starts.

What these examples show is that conversion is not just a result of a good flow. It depends on the user's experience as well. I'm not saying that a conversion-oriented flow is unimportant. It is, especially for hesitant customers. But the buying process matters even more to the buyer.

Is UX the Umbrella Term for Digital Product Design?

Should UX designers change their approach?

I wouldn't say it's about changing approach but more about broadening the scope. UX should always be on the users' side: making applications easier to use, removing friction, thinking about users' needs and the patterns of their behaviour. 

Thanks to this, users don't need to learn new patterns while using the app. Instead, they use their existing instincts to reach the goal.

Does it mean that UX designers should be thinking of everything?

Should they be considering conversion rate optimisation, marketing, content, and more when designing an app?

Yes and no. I wouldn't say that one person should be responsible for everything. In fact, overtasking rarely works. What I strongly believe is that a team of people who understand not only their own field but also the specifics of other fields (and the connections between them) is the only way to create a great product.

UX designers may not be growth strategists, but when UX and product-led growth go hand in hand, team members move in the same direction with the same goals in mind. 

Conversion rate optimisation is tightly intertwined with UX design and simply cannot be a separate process. In a perfect world, acquisition, onboarding, retention, and referrals wouldn't be something that's patched into the app after release. 

They should be designed from the very beginning and refined after launch based on analysis of user behaviour.

There's one more shift worth acknowledging. AI design tools, personalisation engines, and agentic interfaces are compressing what used to take teams weeks into hours. But this makes human UX judgment more important, not less.

Someone still has to define what "good" means, decide what to optimise for, and design the trust and transparency layer that sits between the AI and the user. 

As NN/g's State of UX 2026 observes, after the initial wave of AI hype, surface-level AI features are losing their novelty; the differentiator is deeper thinking about systems and user problems. 

This reinforces the core point: the discipline is expanding, and the designers who thrive are the ones who think holistically – about the user, the business, and now the AI layer in between.

How To Build Products That Are A Pleasure To Use

If there's one thing to take away from this, it's that UX and conversion optimisation are not two separate disciplines. They're two sides of the same coin. 

A beautiful interface that falls apart at the point of purchase is only half-finished work. A conversion funnel that ignores the user's experience will always underperform. 

The best results come when designers, growth strategists, and the wider team collaborate from day one, treating the user's journey and the business's goals as one unified problem. 

No single person needs to know everything, but every team member should understand how their work connects to the whole. That's how you build products that are both a pleasure to use and a pleasure to ship.