User Experience (UX)

What is the real difference between UX and UI design and why does my business need both?

People often use UX and UI interchangeably, but they are two distinct parts of the design puzzle. Think of it like building a house. User Experience (UX) is the architectural blueprint. It’s about the foundation, the layout, how you move from one room to another, and whether the flow of the house makes sense for the people living in it. It’s the core function and logic.

User Interface (UI), on the other hand, is the interior design. It’s the colour of the walls, the style of the furniture, the light fittings, and all the visual details that you see and touch. UI is what makes the house look and feel like a home. It’s the visual presentation of the blueprint.

Your business needs both because they rely on each other. A beautiful website with stunning visuals (great UI) that is confusing to navigate (bad UX) will frustrate users. Likewise, a perfectly logical and easy to use website (great UX) that looks dated and unprofessional (bad UI) will fail to build trust. You need the thoughtful architecture of UX and the beautiful finish of UI to create an experience that works well and feels great.

How does improving user experience on my Webflow website actually increase sales?

A positive user experience on your Webflow website directly translates to better business results. When a visitor lands on your site and finds it easy to use, intuitive, and helpful, it builds immediate trust. This trust is the foundation of any commercial relationship. A smooth experience removes friction and doubt, making a potential customer feel more confident in taking the next step, whether that's making a purchase or filling out an enquiry form.

Great UX is a cornerstone of Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO). By understanding what users want and designing clear pathways for them to achieve it, you naturally increase the percentage of visitors who become customers. This could be simplifying a checkout process, making a call to action button more prominent, or ensuring your contact form is simple. Each small improvement reduces the chance of a user giving up and leaving.

Beyond direct sales, a strong UX also has significant SEO benefits. Search engines like Google want to provide their users with the best results, and they favour websites that people genuinely find useful. When visitors spend more time on your site and have lower bounce rates (meaning they don't leave immediately), it signals to Google that your site is a high quality resource. This can lead to better search rankings, which means more organic traffic and more potential customers discovering your business.

What does a good user experience design process look like for a new website project?

A good UX design process is a journey that always starts with people, not pixels. The first step is research and discovery. This means diving deep to understand your business goals and, just as importantly, the needs, wants, and pain points of your target audience. We often start by defining an Ideal Client Profile (ICP) to ensure we're solving problems for the right people.

With a clear understanding of the user, the next phase is to structure the experience. This begins with creating the site's Information Architecture (IA), which is essentially a map of all the content and how it connects. From there, we build a Wireframe. This is a simple, black and white blueprint for each page, focusing entirely on layout, hierarchy, and functionality before any visual design is introduced. It ensures everything is in the most logical place.

The final stage before development is prototyping and testing. Using tools like Figma, we build interactive Figma Prototypes that look and feel like a real website. This allows us to test the entire user journey, gather feedback, and identify any points of confusion. It's an iterative cycle of designing, testing, and refining until we have a seamless experience that is ready to be built in Webflow.

Can you show me some real-world examples of good and bad user experience?

A great example of good user experience is often one you don't even notice because it feels so natural. Think about a modern food delivery app. You can quickly search for a type of food, filter by price or rating, view clear menus with photos, add items to your cart, and pay in just a few taps. The entire process is designed to be as frictionless as possible, guiding you from hunger to a confirmed order without any confusion. That's good UX, it just works.

On the flip side, we've all encountered bad user experience. Imagine trying to book a flight on a website with a confusing calendar, hidden fees that only appear at the last second, and error messages that don't explain what you did wrong. Or trying to find a simple piece of information on a corporate website, only to be lost in a maze of dropdown menus and corporate jargon. This creates frustration, wastes time, and erodes any trust you might have had in the company. In almost every case, you'll simply give up and find an alternative.

How can we use Figma to improve our website's user experience?

Figma is an absolutely critical tool for crafting an exceptional user experience because it allows us to design, prototype, and test the entire website journey before committing to the build in Webflow. We don't just create static pictures of webpages. We build high-fidelity, interactive prototypes that function almost exactly like the final product. This means you can click buttons, navigate menus, and interact with elements to get a genuine feel for the user flow.

This prototyping capability is a game changer for refining UX. It lets us share a single link with your team to gather feedback, or even conduct user testing sessions with real customers to see how they interact with the design. We can identify points of friction or confusion and make adjustments on the spot. It's infinitely faster and more cost effective to change a design in Figma than it is to recode a live page in Webflow. This process effectively de-risks the entire project.

At Tahi Studio, this Figma-first approach is central to how we deliver quality websites. By solving UX challenges and perfecting the user journey during the design phase, we ensure the final Webflow site we build is not just beautiful, but also intuitive, effective, and perfectly aligned with your business goals. If you are ready for a website that truly works for your users, you can get in touch with us to see how we can help.