User Research should not be optional nor a luxury, it is more of a necessity for any company who wants to build a successful product and a great digital experience for their customers. Being in research for a decade, with time spent in academia and the tech sector, I have seen the drawbacks when User Research is omitted. User Research is particularly important for startups as they have less room to recover from poorly-informed decisions. Thus, understanding users from the start can save money, reduce risks, and increase the chances of creating a product that connects with the target audience.
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Why User Research is Crucial for Startups

User Research can help startups across various industries, for example, Health, Fintech, EdTech and others succeed by creating user-focused digital experiences. This is how:

• Validate the Problem: Before investing time and resources, ensure the problem you are solving is significant to existing or potential customers. For instance, a HealthTech startup could discover through interviews that patients prioritize privacy or greater access to medical information over additional features in a telemedicine app.
  
• Understand the Target Audience: Learn about who your users are, their demographics, behaviors, and needs. This helps tailor the digital experience in your product to meet specific requirements, for instance, an EdTech platform ensuring that it is accessible for students with disabilities.
  
• Clarify Product Goals: Insights from User Research can refine product concepts and features. This reduces the risk that you are spending too much money and time on something people do not want. For example, a Fintech startup could use surveys or interviews to learn their users need more practical budgeting tools instead of features for crypto-investing.
  
• Reduce Risks + Save Resources: By understanding user expectations and pain points with high frequency, the risk of developing a product that does not meet market needs  or user expectations can be minimized, which consequently saves time and money.
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Examples of Research Methods to Help You Scale + Stay Ahead

These are not the only methods that can help, we’re merely highlighting examples. Business problems can be unique and one research approach that works for one company may not work for another. 

User Research becomes more important and critical as your startup grows, it can invalidate or validate your initial ideas or design concepts and will generate valuable insights that help determine which product or feature to focus on as well as reduce (not eliminate) inherent risks in making decisions. Ultimately, the goal of User Research is to help your company and product meet users where they are, ensure you’re adding value to their life, or help them solve a problem.

Being one of the more recognizable methods, Usability Testing can help assess how easy it is for users to interact with your designs and product. Various tools can help you identify and fix usability issues and its application has a wide reach. For example, evaluating what issues exist when users try logging into your website with biometrics; or, evaluating the information architecture in a new app. 

Comparing different versions of (fill in the blank) with A/B Testing or Multivariate Testing can help you evaluate which version performs better with your target user. This is typically useful to quickly test new features or designs, for example, a startup testing two versions of a dashboard to see which improves user engagement and visual comprehension.

Generally useful, but often misused, Surveys can be used to examine user satisfaction, user preferences and opinions, or identifying potential opportunities to improve the user experience. For instance, a company could survey customers to learn what their experience was with a new digital checkout or how they would rate their experience with customer support over the phone. 

Additionally, Market Research can help you stay informed about trends, competitor activities, and emerging customer needs to identify new opportunities. This could involve analyzing industry reports or conducting focus groups, for example, a Fintech startup exploring demand for cryptocurrency features.

Turning User Research Into Results

As mentioned, research can benefit startups across various industries, including Health, Fintech, EdTech, and more. To summarize this in a concise example, below is a User Research I led for a fintech startup in Private Equity, work that directly contributed to improving the user experience and investment outcomes. 
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The Problem

The platform focused on providing High Net Worth Individuals and Institutional Investors access to Private Equity funds.

Despite moderate platform use, many new users failed to invest, with legal regulations and difficulty finding specific financial information posing challenges. These insights led user research to focus on:

• Improving user experience to boost investing confidence and behavior.
• Identifying barriers to investment decisions for both new and experienced investors.
• Increasing the number of new registrants who proceed to invest.
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Solution: Implement User Research

To help the Engineering, Product, and Design teams make informed decisions throughout the research and design process, I implemented a multi-method approach.

• Understand the status quo:
  • 1:1 interviews: Learn about the user, their needs, and their goals using the platform.
  • Card Sorting to evaluate how they categorize and interpret content.

• Inform and test design solutions:
  
  • Use learnings to inform new design concepts and test potential solutions.
  • Usability Testing to test, measure, and iterate.

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The Outcomes After Implementing User Research Insights

• 18% increase in conversion rate with new users actually investing.
• 33% increase in 30-day user engagement on the Investment Opportunities page
• 14% increase of Assets Under Management (AUMs) 30 days after launching updated experience.
• 15% reduction in active investor bounce rate.
• User satisfaction in the investing journey jumped from 60% to 73% (captured 30 days post-launch).
• We not only answered the research questions and closed knowledge gaps, we placed the investor front and center and reached business goals.
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I hope this has shed light on why User Research should not be optional nor a luxury, and should be seen more as a necessity for any company who wants to build a successful product and create a great user experience for their customers. If you have any questions or find yourself in a situation where you need to inform decisions and close knowledge gaps about your user base or a specific market, reach out to me at jairov@circorastudio.com