My old boss told me to stop designing for myself and I was so mad lol

Back in 2019 my manager at a tiny agency in Austin told me I was designing for my own taste, not for the client's users. I thought nah I know what looks good, this is fine. Turns out we did A/B testing on a landing page I designed vs his suggested version and his got 40% more conversions in like 2 weeks. I was so salty but I learned to actually watch analytics and listen to what people click on instead of just going with what I think is pretty. Has anyone else had to swallow their pride and totally change their approach based on hard data?

2 comments

2 Comments

garcia.miles7d ago

Oh man, that stings. I read this case study once about a designer at some big tech company who redesigned a whole checkout flow based on what they thought looked clean. Users couldn't find the buy button. Their conversion rate tanked. They had to roll it back within days. It's wild how much our brains lie to us about what looks "good." Pretty doesn't always mean functional. I started running tiny tests on my own stuff too after hearing about that. Just changing button colors or headline placement. The results are humbling every time. Data doesn't care about your ego. That's the real lesson.

eva_rivera6d ago

God that checkout story hurts just hearing it. Yeah data really doesn't give a damn about your feelings.