How many times have you heard about the importance UX design without anyone explaining what it is?

UX stands for user experience and UX design looks at the interaction between users and their experiences with products or services. The best UX design should be useful, intuitive, and engaging to an audience. To make sure that your audience is able to interact with your product in a valuable and meaningful way, you need to focus on different aspects including:

• Technology
• Marketing
• Psychology
• Sociology
• Science

UX designers do a lot and are an important and underrated part of product development.

What do UX design agencies do?

As mentioned above, UX design agencies use a lot of different disciplines to improve the experiences of users. For day-to-day UX tasks, they can include:

• Market research
• Designing wireframes
• Prototyping
• User testing
• User research
• Storyboarding

Note: UX design agencies tend not to manage the visual design of a product, but instead look at the journey behind the scenes.

So let’s have a look at 7 of the best UX design agencies and how they can help you improve your user experiences.

1. Intimation

Location: Dunbar (Scotland), Newcastle

Intimation can help you find the right way of communicating to your audience.

Thanks to a dynamic team of creative copywriters, developers, animators, and strategic thinkers, they work to a common goal: to focus on what makes each and every client unique.

We help our clients market, promote and grow their businesses through innovative marketing across a range of media, an understanding of budgets and excellent support.

Intimation is also working to become one of only six WIX Strategic Partner agencies in the UK.

Previous clients: Brightwater, Torcall, The Highland Military Tattoo, Premier Tech Aqua UK

2. PMD

Location: Bristol

PMD is a full service design/web studio that specialises in branding.

The studio breathes life into brand and marketing with a focus on the impact on a client’s target audience.

Services offered include:

• Web design & development
• eCommerce
• UI/UX design
• Advertising campaigns
• Print media
• Brochures
• Packaging
• Pitch decks

Whether you have a consumer product or B2B service, all brands can be broken down into 3P’s, Position, Proposition and Personality, successful brands define these clearly and apply them consistently. The formula for creating a credible brand is simple, the story you tell combined with the experience you deliver has to meet a customers expectations, these expectations are established from your story and the quality of your various brand and marketing touchpoints, and that’s where we come in to help.

Previous clients: Warr + Webb, Alphastream, Nonstop, Mack Legal

3. Temper

Location: London

Temper is a digital consultancy that delivers and unlocks digital growth.

We build digital-first brands – Consumed with technology and shaped by data, our brands fuel commercial growth and make change happen.

Their people-first approach has helped a range of businesses increase their brand engagement, capture valuable customer data and turn users into happy, returning customers.

Previous clients: Diageo, EDF Energy, Europcar, Five Guys

4. VDesign

Location: London

VDesign is a creative digital media company providing services that accelerate their businesses further through design, development and marketing.

With over 25 years design, marketing, and development experience in the design, the team covers a range of services including UX design, print design, web and app development, and SEO

We have built a framework with our creative geniuses to save you time and money.

Previous clients: Fabbri Boots, Arktos, Cyberox, Studiosurf

5. Transition Creative

Location: Gloucester

Transition is a web design agency that specialises in a range of services that help their clients bring in more enquiries and sales. They do this with high-quality UX design and the development of transformative business sites.

With a wealth of experience within digital design and development, we work with a variety of companies from startups to large organisations. Whether you require landing pages that convert customers, a CMS to manage content, eCommerce that sells products or Progressive Web Applications for communicating via push notifications. Our proven processes are tailored to help support your objectives.

Outside their web design services, Transition also offers SEO audits, hosting, support and maintenance, and content (copywriting and photography).

Previous clients: Forestry Commission England, Arkwell & Wills, ATB Guitars, Catch Design Management

6. ActiveWin Media

Location: Manchester

ActiveWin Media works to offer its clients multiple digital options and build strategies that return on investment.

For their UX consultations, everything highlighted is designed to make improve conversions and ActiveWin carefully plans and designs every detail with transparent guidelines and how the potential impact will contribute to success.

The sooner you invest in UX and CRO services, the more successful your business will be online.

Previous clients: Betfred, Wigan Warriors, Moneyplus Group, First Achieve

7. Instrument

Location: Portland, New York

A UX design agency that focuses on the cross-section between brand & communication innovation and product & service innovation. They work on creating, from scratch, the digital products designed to solve business problems, as well as to transform the way your customers interact and communicate with the business.

In creating new UX products, the focus on user-centric design that is insight-driven and systematically tested, meaning a lot of research and ongoing campaign management goes into each service they provide. They also work with a focus on what is most impactful on your bottom line, tracking the performance indicators that matter most to your business growth.

Previous clients: Sonos, Altassian, Nike, and PATH

Do you need UX design?

Without question.

The work of a UX design agency can seem like it is interchangeable with a web designer or app developer and while there is some overlap, UX designers are crucial to driving conversions as the customer journey facilitates that. According to UXCam, for every $1 spent on UX design, a business can see a $100 ROI (return on investment). Alongside that, 88% of users are less likely to return to a website with bad UX.

When you’re choosing a UX design agency, it’s important to make sure you’re aware of what kind of services you need. If you have a specific app, website, or other digital product in mind, for example – page or website builder, then there are many above that can help you create them, with different specializations on different aims and mediums.

If you’re less certain of what you need, others can provide the research and conceptual services that help you find out what your approach should be. As such, make sure you know where you are in your UX creation journey and partner with the team that can help you from there.