Top 7 UX changes to consider for your platform

The top UX changes to consider for a digital platform are user-centered design, clear information architecture, responsive design, fast loading speed, an appealing and accessible visual design, solid page security and the consistent application of design principles. Sequenced by their effect on conversion and retention, they turn a website or app from a cost into a source of revenue.

Picture a chief executive who opens the company website on her phone in the back of a taxi, ahead of a board meeting. The page takes several seconds to appear, the menu hides the one product she wants to check, and a security warning pops up when she tries the contact form. She is not a user experience specialist, and she does not need to be. She experiences, in one minute, what customers experience every day, and she realizes that the company has been investing in advertising to send people to a place that does not welcome them.

That moment explains why user experience belongs on the executive agenda. In the current digital world, UX design plays a fundamental role in building successful websites and applications. When the needs and expectations of users guide the work, the company delivers satisfying experiences that keep them engaged and make them likely to recommend the platform to others. The difficulty is not knowing that experience matters. It is deciding what to change first with limited time and budget. This article offers a way to think about that decision, starting with how to know whether a platform needs change, then covering the seven changes that most often pay back, the considerations that determine whether they succeed and the consequences that justify the investment.

How do we know if our platform needs a UX change?

A website or application should be in constant evolution, which means measuring it constantly. Tools such as Hotjar for behavior, GTmetrix and PageSpeed for performance, and analytics for traffic and conversion provide information on engagement, tasks completed, load speed and many other signals. With them, a team can judge whether the functionality, the architecture and the search visibility of the page are in good shape, and can establish an order of priority for the changes. Our article on why Google Analytics is important in UX explains how to read the behavior data.

Performance is a good first test because it is measurable and standardized. Google's Web Vitals program defines three Core Web Vitals and sets thresholds for a good experience: Largest Contentful Paint at 2.5 seconds or less, Interaction to Next Paint at 200 milliseconds or less and Cumulative Layout Shift at 0.1 or less, measured at the 75th percentile of page loads. If your platform fails these on mobile, the problem is not cosmetic. It is a barrier standing between your advertising spend and your revenue.

The second test is business evidence. High abandonment on a key page, low completion of a form, repeated support questions about the same topic and a gap between traffic and sales all point to experience problems. The third is direct observation, which means watching real customers attempt real tasks. Together, these three signals indicate whether the platform needs a refinement or a redesign.

>> Importance of User Experience in website development <<

What are the first UX changes that should be prioritized?

The following seven changes apply to almost any platform, and together they produce a satisfying experience that leads to higher revenue and greater exposure for the company. The first and most fundamental is user-centered design, which means putting the user at the center of the process. It involves understanding the target audience and researching needs, goals and behaviors. A practical vehicle is the buyer persona, a semi-fictional profile of the user that holds the information needed to tailor the experience to expectations, improving usability and satisfaction. A health insurer that designs its member portal around the three tasks members perform most often, such as checking coverage, finding a provider and filing a claim, will outperform one that designs around its internal organization chart.

The second is a clear information architecture. An intuitive, hierarchical navigation helps users find what they look for. Categories, tags and drop-down menus should organize content coherently, and the layout should help users find what they need and keep their attention on it. Clear navigation facilitates exploration and improves the experience, and it is one of the cheapest changes to test. A manufacturer with hundreds of products often finds that renaming categories in the customer's language, and not the company's, raises both search visibility and conversion.

The third is responsive design. In the era of mobile devices, a website must be accessible on different devices and screen sizes. A responsive design adapts automatically from desktop computers to tablets and phones and guarantees a consistent experience for every user. For many consumer businesses, mobile is now the main channel, so treating it as a secondary version is a strategic mistake. The fourth is fast loading speed. Users tend to abandon sites that take too long to load, so performance deserves continuous attention through image compression, caching and file size reduction, in addition to keeping code libraries and platform integrations up to date.

The fifth is an appealing visual design. An aesthetic and attractive design captures attention and offers a satisfying experience. It uses an appropriate combination of colors, readable fonts and visual elements, a good layout and adequate contrast so that the text is legible and meets accessibility rules. Beauty here is functional. It communicates credibility, which matters especially for financial, legal and healthcare services where trust precedes the transaction.

The sixth is page security. To earn the trust of users, the platform should redirect to HTTPS, use updated code libraries and keep security patches current, so that nothing compromises the information users provide. A browser warning on a payment page can cancel a sale in seconds. The seventh is the application of design principles. Applying them when creating or improving a design ensures coherence, holds attention and creates positive experiences. Our collection of the best success stories of companies with UX/UI strategies shows how leading organizations apply them.

>> Best success stories of companies with UX/UI strategies <<

A reasonable objection is that seven changes are too many to undertake at once. They are, and they should not be. The order depends on where the platform loses the most value. A site with slow mobile loading should address speed before it commissions a new visual identity, while a platform with strong performance but confusing navigation should restructure its information architecture first. The principle is to fix the constraint that most limits conversion, measure the effect and move to the next.

What should we consider when making changes to a platform?

Several disciplines separate successful changes from expensive ones. The first is user research. Understanding who users are, what they expect and how they currently interact reveals areas for improvement and supports informed decisions. The second is clarity about business objectives. The company must define what it wants from the change, whether higher retention, better conversion or more engagement, because aligning the changes with objectives turns design choices into strategic decisions and gives the team a way to judge success.

The third is usability testing with real users. Observing how people interact with the new changes reveals problems, weaknesses and areas that need further work, and designs can be adjusted on the basis of feedback and results. Usability should be a priority in every change, so that users can complete tasks intuitively and without difficulty, with simplified workflows, clear language and visual feedback guiding them. Our article on usability testing in UX design describes how to run these tests. The fourth is consistency. Using the same design patterns and elements across the platform lets users recognize components and actions, reduces the learning curve and builds familiarity.

The fifth is accessibility, which ensures that people with disabilities can use the platform. The best reference is the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, and since the earlier 2.0 version cited by many teams, the standard has advanced. The W3C announced that WCAG 2.2 became a W3C Recommendation on October 5, 2023, adding nine success criteria to version 2.1. In practice, this means attention to color contrast, keyboard navigation and screen reader compatibility. Accessibility is also a commercial matter, since it widens the audience and reduces legal exposure in markets with accessibility regulations.

The sixth is iteration with continuous feedback. UX changes should be an ongoing process, launching incremental changes and collecting user feedback to assess impact and make further adjustments. User feedback is invaluable for understanding how people feel about the changes and what still needs work. This logic of continuous improvement applies equally to products and business models, as we discuss in continual improvement applied to the business model and value proposition, and it connects with the broader argument in UX: a lever that drives the entire sales cycle.

>> UX: a lever that drives the entire sales cycle <<

What are the consequences of improving UX?

The positive effects of improving user experience can reach the whole company. A platform with good UX tends to retain users for longer. When people find value and enjoy using it, they are more likely to return and use it regularly, which supports sustainable growth and a more engaged user base. Engagement also increases. An easy, appealing and satisfying platform encourages users to spend more time exploring its features, leaving feedback, sharing content or making purchases, which generates business benefits.

Reputation improves as well. A platform with exceptional UX helps the brand, because satisfied users speak positively about it and recommend it, which builds a positive image, increases visibility and attracts new users. Finally, UX becomes a competitive advantage. In a market where alternatives are a click away, a superior experience makes users choose and prefer your platform, which helps win new users and keep existing ones. Consider a regional bank competing with digital-only entrants. It will rarely win on interest rates alone, but a clear, fast and secure onboarding process can decide the choice.

It is worth acknowledging the limit of these claims. The benefits of better UX are cumulative and indirect, and a single change rarely shows a dramatic effect. Measuring before and after, ideally with controlled tests, protects the company from attributing every movement in revenue to the redesign. It also helps to learn which of the seven changes truly moved the needle, so the next investment is better informed. Our piece on UX design and usability in web forms offers an example of how a small, specific change can improve completion.

A final practical point concerns governance. UX improvements often stall because nobody owns them across departments: marketing owns the content, IT owns the code and customer service owns the complaints. A named owner with a shared set of indicators, a modest recurring budget and a monthly review prevents the platform from drifting back to old habits. Without that structure, even a well-executed redesign decays within a year as new pages, campaigns and integrations add friction that nobody is accountable for removing.

What this means for the C-level

For the chief executive, the platform is the front door of the company, and experience quality is a strategic matter, not a design detail. The decision is to assign an owner, define the three or four indicators that matter and review them as regularly as financial results. For the chief marketing officer, UX change is a way to convert the traffic already paid for, which usually offers a higher return than buying more traffic. Attraction without a good experience wastes budget.

For the chief commercial officer, a platform with clear architecture and a simple path to purchase or contact accelerates the funnel. For the chief financial officer, improvements in speed, security and usability reduce abandonment, support costs and risk, three sources of efficiency that are easy to quantify. For service and customer experience leaders, a platform that answers questions clearly reduces the volume of avoidable contacts and increases loyalty. In short, UX is where attraction, conversion, retention and efficiency meet on the same screen.

How to start on Monday morning

Ask your team to complete the three most important tasks on your platform from a mobile phone, on a normal connection, while someone times them and notes every moment of hesitation. Run your main pages through a performance tool and compare the results with the thresholds above. Review your analytics for the pages with the highest exit rates, and read the last thirty questions your customer service team received about the website.

From that evidence, choose the one change among the seven that would remove the largest obstacle, define the indicator it should move and set a date to review it. Involve marketing, sales and service in the choice, because each sees different symptoms of the same problem. Implement in small steps, test with real users before and after, and write down what you learned. Repeating this cycle monthly will deliver more than a redesign project every three years, and it keeps the platform aligned with the way customers actually behave.

How ICX helps

ICX Consulting is a customer experience and commercial strategy consulting firm headquartered in Miami. We help leadership teams diagnose where their digital experience loses customers and revenue, design the changes that matter most and measure the result. Our user experience practice covers UX research, UX optimization and usability and accessibility, and it connects with our work on conversion and the customer journey.

To make navigation decisions with a structured method, use the Information Architecture Toolkit, which helps you organize content so that users find what they need.

Frequently asked questions

Which UX change should we prioritize first?

The one that removes the biggest obstacle on your most valuable journey. For many companies this is mobile loading speed or navigation clarity, but evidence from analytics, user testing and customer questions should decide it.

How often should a platform be updated for UX?

Continuously, in small increments. A monthly cycle of measuring, changing and testing keeps the platform aligned with customer behavior and avoids the cost and risk of large redesigns every few years.

Is accessibility a legal requirement?

It depends on the country, sector and type of organization, and regulations are evolving. Beyond legal exposure, accessible design reaches more customers and improves usability for everyone, so it is wise to follow the current WCAG guidance and consult legal counsel for your market.

How do we measure the return on UX improvements?

Choose indicators linked to business goals, such as conversion rate, task completion, abandonment, support contacts and repeat visits, and compare them before and after each change. Where possible, test two versions with comparable audiences to isolate the effect.

Conclusion

User experience design is a crucial aspect of creating successful platforms and meeting user needs. By prioritizing the seven changes in this article in the order that best fits your situation, a company can significantly improve the experience of its visitors and see the benefits in retention, engagement, reputation and competitive advantage. If you suspect your platform is losing customers it should keep, request a diagnostic with an ICX consultant and we will help you decide which change to make first.