Series A fintech startup. $12M raised. Hired “top-tier” agency for complete product redesign. Six weeks, $85K, beautiful deck.

Launched Tuesday morning.

Thursday: support tickets flooding in. Users couldn’t find basic features. Onboarding completion dropped from 68% to 34%. Developers filing bugs about flows that made no technical sense.

Friday: emergency call.

What I found: Every screen looked stunning in Figma. None of them worked in practice. The agency had designed for their portfolio, not for actual humans trying to complete actual tasks.

Checkout flow: five steps, zero input validation, no error states documented. When asked why, agency response: “We assumed your developers would handle that.”

They didn’t. Because it wasn’t specified anywhere.

Three months to fix what six weeks had broken.

This wasn’t unusual. This is what happens when UX design services prioritize deliverables over diagnosis.

The Three Red Flags I See in Most UX Design Services

If you’ve hired agencies before, these will feel painfully familiar:

Template-Led Thinking Disguised as Custom Work

“Here’s your dashboard, based on the layout we used for that logistics app last month.”

Everything looks professional. Nothing quite fits your product.

Grid’s perfect. Typography’s on-brand. But information architecture makes no sense for your users. Navigation copied from different industry. Feature prioritization based on what looked good in their case study.

Inherited B2B SaaS redesign where only custom element was the logo. Everything else: templates from component library, recolored.

The tell: They show you mockups in week one. Proper discovery takes longer to understand your users before touching pixels.

Proper UX design services start with research, not Figma templates. If you’re paying $50K+ and getting Notion-style layouts with your brand colors, you bought an expensive placeholder.

Yes, even the ones with microinteractions and glassmorphism. Still placeholders.

Disconnected UX and UI (My Personal Hell)

The interface looks incredible in Dribbble shots.

Try to actually use it: pain begins immediately.

What I see constantly:

• Hover states that trigger wrong actions
• Flows that dead-end with no back button
• Dropdowns with no logical grouping
• CTAs that say same thing regardless of context
• Forms that don’t validate until submission

Why? UX designer never talked to UI designer. Or worse: same person doing both jobs, winging half the work.

Project I inherited last year: e-commerce checkout had seven steps. Beautiful UI. But:

• Step 3 asked for shipping info before user selected product quantities
• Step 5 showed payment options before confirming address
• Step 6 had “Back” button that cleared entire cart
• No step showed what user was actually buying

When I asked agency about flow logic, they said: “The CEO wanted minimal steps, so we combined some things.”

Combining steps isn’t the same as logical flow architecture. These are different problems requiring different solutions. Good UX design services know the difference.

Cart abandonment rate: 87%. Industry average for this product category: 42%.

Fixed version: 11 steps (not 7), clear progress indicators, validation at each step, summary before payment. Cart abandonment: 39%.

More steps. Better results. Because users knew what they were doing at each point.

Handoff Decks With Zero Strategic Thinking

The 120-page Figma file.

Components everywhere. Style guides. Moodboards. Spacing specs. Color variables documented to the pixel.

And absolutely no explanation of why anything exists.

I got handoff file where every CTA said “Submit” — regardless of what user was submitting. Forms, comments, account settings, payment info. Everything: “Submit.”

The explanation: “We wanted consistency.”

Consistency in language isn’t consistency in meaning. Users don’t think “I need to submit my comment.” They think “I want to post this.”

Good UX design services don’t end at handoff deck. They end when product works. When users complete onboarding without rage-quitting. When they finish tasks without support tickets.

Most startup website design projects end with beautiful Figma files and confused users.

What Real UX Design Services Actually Look Like

Let me show you what non-negotiable means:

Discovery Before Any Deliverables

I don’t start pushing pixels on day one.

I ask uncomfortable questions:

Week 1 discovery:

• What’s actually broken? (Not what you think is broken)
• Why do users bounce at step two? (Actual data, not assumptions)
• What do you think users want? (Then I’ll tell you what they actually want)
• Who’s making final decisions? (If answer is “committee,” I’m out)

Anyone promising screens in week one without discovery is either psychic or bullshit artist. Usually both.

Real UX design services start with diagnosis, not deliverables.

Last project: founder wanted complete dashboard redesign. Spent week one watching user session recordings. Actual problem: dashboard was fine. Onboarding never explained what metrics meant. Users reached dashboard confused, blamed design.

Fixed onboarding copy. Dashboard complaints dropped 73%. Saved $40K not redesigning thing that wasn’t broken.

This is how audits should work: finding actual problems, not assumed ones.

Design That Reflects Product Strategy (Not Agency Portfolio)

If product’s about simplicity, design needs to breathe.

If product’s about power, design should guide complexity without hiding it.

Translating positioning into pixels isn’t just “making it pretty.”

Example: Client’s landing page had 14 sections. Written for investors, not users. Features listed but not explained. Benefit statements that sounded like pitch deck slides.

I killed 9 sections. Kept 5 that actually mattered to target users.

Result: Time on page increased 2.3 minutes. Trial signups up 34%. Because site finally spoke to right audience.

This wasn’t design genius. This was understanding who the product serves before designing anything.

Most UX design services skip this. They optimize for awards, not outcomes.

Async Collaboration, Not Meeting Theater

I don’t book calls to “walk you through the design.”

I use Loom. I annotate Figma. I explain thinking in writing. You respond in your time. No sync hell pretending to be productive.

My clients don’t get 10 wireframe versions. They get one version with 10 well-considered decisions made.

Why this works:

• No meetings where 8 people discuss button color
• No “let me get back to you” delays
• No stakeholder redesigning in real-time
• Documented reasoning survives the call

This is how I work with clients who have actual jobs. We’re here to ship product, not perform collaboration.

Embedded in Team, Not Orbiting It

Best UX design services don’t sit outside your team taking orders.

I work alongside PMs, engineers, founders. Not in parallel. That’s how decisions get made fast, feedback loops stay tight, design doesn’t feel like separate sacred department.

What this looks like:

• In Slack channels answering developer spacing questions
• Recording emergency walkthroughs before investor demos
• Reviewing user complaints with support team
• Sitting in product planning calls

I’ve been asked: “Isn’t that outside your scope?”

No. That’s the job. If you’re not embedded in product team, you’re just decorating requirements documents.

The alternative is what most agencies do: send you Figma link, disappear for two weeks, come back with screens that don’t solve actual problems. This is exactly what happens with outsourced implementations that prioritize process over product.

Why This Actually Matters (Besides Preventing Disasters)

Because bad UX design services are expensive.

Not just in money. In time, in trust, in lost momentum, in opportunity cost.

Real example: SaaS client, signup flow with 78% drop-off rate.

Original design: five required fields before explaining what product did. Email, password, company name, role, team size — all before seeing single feature.

Users filling out form thinking “What am I even signing up for?”

Redesigned flow: show value first. Two-step signup. Email + password initially. Additional info collected during actual product usage, not at gate.

Drop-off rate: 78% → 31%

Conversion increase: 224%

Time to implement: 3 days

Cost of original broken design: Three months of launches missing targets, $40K in paid acquisition wasted on users who bounced at signup, founder stress questioning entire product strategy.

That’s not design debt. That’s product-killing negligence disguised as UX best practices.

You don’t get fixes like this from fancy decks. You get them from someone embedded in actual problem, not just the deliverables.

The Difference Between Agency Theater and Real UX Design Services

Most agencies sell UX design services like factory production:

Week 1: Discovery (scheduled calls, questionnaires)
Week 2-3: Wireframes (40 screens)
Week 4-5: Visual design (same screens, now with colors)
Week 6: Handoff (Figma file, good luck)

Missing: Understanding whether anything solves user problems.

Real UX design services look more like:

Week 1: Why does this product exist? Who uses it? What’s broken?
Week 2: Watch users struggle. Find patterns. Question assumptions.
Week 3: Design solutions for actual problems, not assumed ones.
Week 4: Test with users. Break own designs. Fix what doesn’t work.
Week 5: Ship. Measure. Iterate.
Week 6+: Embedded ongoing. Not “done.”

The difference: one produces portfolio pieces. Other produces working products.

What agencies optimize for is their case studies, not your outcomes.

What You’re Actually Hiring (Not Screens)

You’re not buying Figma files.

You’re hiring thinking. Strategic decisions. Understanding that translates into interface choices that work.

If agency treats UX design services like handoff process or visual facelift: run.

Or call me. I’ve fixed worse.

What I don’t offer:

• “Startup Package” with personas and screen sizes
• Templates with your logo
• 80-page strategy decks no one reads
• Sticky-note workshops

What I actually do:

• Find what’s actually broken
• Fix it with design that survives real users
• Embed until product works
• Leave documentation developers don’t curse at

The $85K fintech redesign I mentioned at the start?

Took three months to fix. Not because work was complex. Because I had to undo agency’s decisions before making new ones.

Fixed product metrics: Onboarding completion: 34% → 71%
Support tickets: -62%
Time to first value: 11 minutes → 3 minutes

That’s what proper UX design services produce: measurable improvements in how users actually experience your product.

Everything else is just expensive decoration.

Final Thought: Stop Buying Screens, Start Buying Strategy

Most agencies sell artifacts: wireframes, mockups, prototypes, style guides.

Real website design strategy sells you understanding: why users struggle, what actually fixes it, how to build product that works.

Difference shows up at launch.

Agency deliverables look great in Figma. Real design works in production.

Evaluating agencies? Watch for:

• Showing process before asking about your users (red flag)
• Promising timeline before understanding problems (bigger red flag)
• Case studies focused on aesthetics instead of outcomes (run)

You deserve better than template-driven, portfolio-focused, handoff-and-disappear design theater.

You deserve someone who gives a shit whether your product actually works.

That’s the service. Everything else is noise.