Should you really spend money on UX?

UX budget. It's a tough one to crack.

We've watched many early-stage founders set their UX budget – some brilliantly, others catastrophically.

The winners solved a puzzle that has little to do with spending more money. It's about spending the right money at the right time.

83%

That's how much conversion boost you can get if you up the UX budget by 10%.

3 more numbers that slash the debate about whether UX matters for early-stage startups:

→ Every confused visitor costs you $35
→ Bad interfaces create 3-5x more support tickets ($2,000+ monthly answering "how do I..." questions)
→ UX shortcuts become 5-10x more expensive to fix later

A bonus one 🫶 Every $1 invested in UX design yields $100 in returns.

The catch? Timing is everything.

Spend $5,000 on user research before building features? Smart investment. Spend $50,000 perfecting animations before achieving product-market fit? Not a good call.

⚡ UX budget by funding stage

Bootstrap ($0-$500K): 8-12% of total funding | Range: $15K-$25KBudget allocation: 50% user validation, 35% wireframes, 15% visual design

Pre-Seed/Seed ($500K-$2M): 15-20% of dev budget | Range: $25K-$50KBudget allocation: 30% onboarding, 25% core usability, 25% design system, 20% mobile

Seed/Series A ($2M-$10M): 20-25% of dev budget | Range: $50K-$100K+Budget allocation: 30% research, 25% optimisation, 25% scaling, 20% new features

🏗️ Where to spend first

Not all UX work delivers equal value. Here's the priority stack:

Tier 1 – Foundation (60% of budget): User problem validation, primary user flow design, functional design system. This is what gets users from signup to value as quickly as possible.

Tier 2 – Growth enablers (30%): Onboarding optimisation, feature usability testing, design system documentation. This is what improves activation and reduces churn.

Tier 3 – Polish (10%): Micro-interactions, advanced research, brand expression. Skip this entirely until Tiers 1 and 2 are solid.

Focus on the UX work that directly impacts your current growth bottleneck. If users can't figure out your core value prop, skip the animations and fix the messaging.

🤝 Build vs buy

The most successful startups we've seen follow a hybrid approach:

Stage 1: Agency or senior freelancer builds the foundationStage 2: Junior in-house designer handles day-to-dayStage 3: Senior in-house lead + agency for special projects

This gives you expertise when you need it, cost control as you scale, and knowledge transfer throughout.

Two easy traps to avoid: spending nothing and hoping for the best, or throwing money at expensive agencies without clear objectives. Both waste precious resources. Invest strategically at each stage, measure religiously, optimise continuously.