Top 10 UI/UX Mistakes Startups Make

In this article, we went through the most common UI/UX design mistakes startups face with. Learn how to avoid them and how to make the user experience and interface work together.

What is website and mobile app UI/UX for startups?

UI/UX it’s a key factor for startup success at the early product live stage, whether it’s a website or mobile app. It’s a straightforward way to gain early users’ attention, their trust, and build a connection with them. Moreover, adopting smart UI/UX practices helps you stand out from competitors and quickly receive feedback.

UX is responsible for user experience, how people will feel the product while using it, and how intuitive and easy to use the navigation is. It covers the biggest design part that directly affects people’s experience, as well as their first impression. Namely, navigation logic, page loading speed, balanced graphics and text elements, and readable text. 

UI, in turn, works for the user interface side. It takes care of the visual product part, in other words, for everything the user sees on every product page. Like buttons, colors, visual elements, information blocks, and their placement, icons, animations, and so on. UI is primarily responsible for how these elements look and work. 

Together, they create a cohesive experience for users, where form meets function, to convey the product’s main goals and benefits.

Why do startups often underestimate the importance of UI/UX?

It’s because small companies believe that UI/UX is just a pretty design, and the ultimate success is to go to market before anything else. But in fact, without solid UI/UX, your product won’t hit the business goals you’re aiming for. Even if the product is something brand-new on the market. Note that UI/UX it’s a complex process that involves user research, testing, usability, perception psychology, and more.

Another reason is that startups don’t have enough resources to conduct UX research and create a sleek and well-thought-out design. Some of them believe that they understand their target audience’s needs enough, so there’s no need to dig deeper into this question. In this case, they prefer to prioritize the technical side above the design. As a result, this ends up creating a product that’s hard to use, misses the business mission, and delivers a poor user experience. 

Also, businesses can underestimate the UI/UX importance just because they simply don’t have a clear design strategy. Without it, startups may face issues such as inconsistency in design and difficulties in product scaling.

What happens when startups prioritize appearance over usability?

This led to building a product with a pretty interface, but that hard to use, and it’s a really big challenge to understand how to find something or do the target action. It’s the biggest mobile app or website design mistakes. This kind of product wastes effort and budget, failing fast because people can’t figure it out or get annoyed using it. 

Here are more issues that may arise when appearance goes over usability:

• Users get confused by non-standard visual elements and take more time to complete tasks.
• Users have trouble learning when things aren’t done according to standard patterns (like atypical buttons or odd gestures).
• Attractive but heavy graphic elements don’t resize or adjust well on different screens, creating bugs on the UI side.
• Large images, animations, fonts, and effects slow down page loading and app performance.

The most common design mistakes startups make

Common design mistakes involve ignoring fundamental UI/UX practices and approaches. When the team focused only on the technical side and the design part seemed like something that could be done later without a certain plan. Nothing explains it better than this quote from Don Norman (author of The Design of Everyday Things): “When we make mistakes in design, we blame the user. But it is never the user’s fault – it is always a failure of the design itself.”

To underline why UI/UX is key and guide you on what to watch out for, we highlighted the most common mobile and web design mistakes to avoid.

No user research

In other words, skipping the essential stage in product development, which covers exploring users’ needs and behaviour. Who needs your product? How will they use it? Will it find its audience, or will it be useful for people? When you know the answers, you visualize the result you’re striving to achieve. If not – you work on a product that serves your vision, not your users’ needs. It will take some time to gather the essential facts about users and their needs, but it’s worth it; it’s a guarantee of your future startup success. 

Focus on visuals over usability

To understand this point, just imagine a book that has a stunning cover that catches your attention from the first second. And once you open it, it’s just – “Hold up, what?!” There is unreadable text, headers placed in unusual sizes and fonts, and the page order is totally mixed up. It’s impossible to read. That’s what happened when you bet on attractive design and cool graphic elements, but in the end, they are totally unusable. Don’t separate WHAT will users see and HOW will they use your product. It’s a whole point that you should put into your design strategy at first.  

Inconsistent design

This means using different fonts, styles, and design elements without a consistent vision guiding it. Talking about big brands, we bet you have a clear picture of them. You definitely know what their logo or website design looks like. They accomplish this by designing a consistent look and feel, covering all fonts, colors, elements, and the brand’s style. 

People, looking through such platforms, feel that this place has a complete system behind it and makes them feel a certain way. To achieve the same effect for your product, keep the design consistent. Strive to deliver a single, strong impression rather than a mix of random fonts.

Complex and confusing navigation

It feels like you need to find a certain page, but first, you have to go on a whole quest to get there. Don’t overcomplicate it. If you can make some action simple – do it. People go through the pages using the same behavioral patterns. They instinctively know where the menu is and how to find buttons like “Next Page” or “Homepage.” We all know. 

If there is something goes wrong, and users can’t find what they need – they leave. So, avoid these UX design mistakes and make your product usability a breeze for everyone. How to do it? Go back to the research stage and begin from there. 

Lack of responsive design

Every so often, startups don’t focus on responsive design. For instance, if they work on a website, they don’t think about design for the mobile version and how it will look like on a smartphone screen. Mobile-first design is a top trend in the digital market today. Following it saves responsiveness for both startups and big guys in various industries. Due to the fact that 92% of users use their smartphones to look through websites or web apps. 

It’s a common misconception to think that if a website looks good, it will automatically look the same on every screen. Well, not exactly so. Since smartphones have smaller screens, all the information on your website can display incorrectly or just look messy. This can ruin the first impression and drive users away.

Ignoring accessibility principles

Accessibility is not optional anymore. As you know, the European Accessibility Act came into force on June 28, 2025. It says that any business providing products or services in the EU must now comply with digital accessibility requirements, wherever they’re based. If you are just on your way to preparing your product for market launch, it must already comply with the EAA requirements. Following this act, you avoid legal consequences and give a chance to get a wider audience for your product.

Cluttered interface

Your design should translate ONE key thought. What your business is about and the value it brings to people. Then, build other key design elements and features around this. This way, you avoid pages cluttering with unnecessary information. Alongside this, you boost users’ experience, which is the biggest advantage here. 

Poor performance

It’s not only about convenience. It’s more about modern users’ behaviour. Since they browse on the go, it’s crucial that pages are accessible with just a fingertip tap. When they don’t get this, they also leave. Time is a precious resource, and no one will wait for your gorgeous website to load the homepage. So, pay great attention to this and save your audience time. 

Lack of user feedback integration

At the MVP stage, startups gather the early users’ feedback to understand what product areas need improvement. It adds more value to the final result and serves as a solid base for your product’s effectiveness. But what the most important – it’s valuable data straight from users, showing what they like and what needs to change. There is no need to wonder why people leave; they actually tell you that. So, skipping this step or its weak integration means your product won’t fully meet user needs. It’s one of the most common web design mistakes. 

Underestimating onboarding

An insufficient user onboarding process is also the biggest UI/UX mistake. Users can simply not understand how to use it. Sure, they can go over instructions and do everything by themselves, but it can lead to misunderstanding specific features that your product has. Or don’t see the core features your website or app offers. This way, you achieve two things. First, earn users’ trust and loyalty by caring for them and helping them understand how to use the product properly.

Why does inconsistent design hurt user trust?

Inconsistent design is a result of a typical UI/UX mistake startups often make. It creates confusion about your business’s mission and signals unprofessionalism. In reality, it seems like you didn’t know what font to choose, and decide to use them all. UX experts state that inconsistency in styles, colors, fonts, or elements’ behaviour across screens makes the interface harder to process.

Users are not sure how to interact with the product properly, and, to be honest, don’t waste their time solving this puzzle. This way, lots of startups lose the users’ trust at the very beginning. To prevent this, we advise choosing the specific set of visuals, fonts, and branded colors at the research stage. Help your audience understand what your product is about without extra effort. 

How does complex navigation turn users off?

Confusing navigation pushes users away because it increases the time and effort to complete tasks. A confusing menu, unclear information path, or too deeply hidden information can make users frustrated. In addition, сomplex navigation makes interacting less enjoyable and hurts the overall user experience. Here is another quote from Jakob Nielsen (co-founder of Nielsen Norman Group) to express this: “A bad user experience is like a leaky bucket: no matter how much traffic you pour into it, the users will simply leave.”

To avoid this web design mistake, make every interaction as simple as possible. Users should find your product easy and fluid to use.

How does poor performance and cluttered UI ruin the user experience?

Loading speed directly affects user retention and conversions. Slow page loading, interaction delays, or application freezes only make your product inconvenient to use. An overloaded interface also negatively affects the user experience. Too many buttons, text blocks, and visuals confuse users and make simple actions harder. Users simply don’t understand how to find what they are looking for. Only one thing is clear – how to get out of there. 

Overall, a chaotic interface and slow page loading increase cognitive load, reduce trust in you, and cause users to abandon the product. Even if the product is conceptually strong and works well.

How can startups avoid these UI/UX design mistakes and create better products?

We talk a lot about what mistakes in UI/UX design to avoid. Now, let’s break down what steps startups to follow to build valuable, pleasant, and easy-to-use products. We assume to stick to these key design practices.

• Conduct user research with surveys and prototype testing. This helps you deeply understand the real users’ needs and pain points they want to solve. After all, you build the product for them, so let them talk about what they expect to see. 
• Prioritize usability over aesthetics. In a perfect scenario, they should work together; don’t separate them. Firstly, the design should be intuitive and logical, and then add aesthetics to it.
• Create a consistent design. It’s the core of everything. A unified color palette, fonts, and patterns help users quickly navigate and build trust.
• Menus and paths to information should be simple and predictable. Explore the key behavioral patterns in design and add them to your product. 
• Ensure responsive and accessible design. Everyone, including people with disabilities, should be able to use the interface on all devices.
• Simplify the interface and reduce clutter. Use a logical hierarchy of information and leave only the essentials. This way, you achieve fast page loading, which also improves the user experience.
• Always consider user feedback and make changes based on it. For this, regularly collect feedback and make the necessary changes. 
• And finally, create an effective onboarding. Even short instructions help new users quickly master the product. It’s a rock-solid guarantee of building trust with your audience and growing your user base. 

Conclusion

Mistakes are an inseparable part of every process. They help us understand more about what we can make better and what to avoid in the future. In the context of UI/UX design, most of such mistakes can cost user trust and additional effort to make changes. To set things up correctly from day one, start with a deep analysis of what your product is about, what your audience expects to see in it, and what design elements help you connect these points. Put in the effort up front and let the world see how outstanding and beneficial your product is.