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You ask for a UX budget. They answer: “It's nice, but not a priority.” The problem? You are speaking Design (empathy, user journeys) to people who speak Business (Cash, Code). Let’s be clear: your CEO doesn't care about “Gestalt principles.” He looks at Churn and Cash Flow. Your CTO doesn't want a “Wow effect,” she wants to reduce Technical Debt. To unlock funds, put away your color palette and take out the calculator. Here are the financial arguments to sell UX to those signing the checks.
Table of contents
Convincing the CEO that UX isn't a luxury, it's risk management
If you walk into your CEO's office saying "Our users find the interface a bit sad," you've already lost. Your CEO manages a P&L (Profit and Loss) statement. For them, every line of expense must justify its existence with a corresponding line of revenue.
The fundamental error is presenting UX as a "comfort" or aesthetic expense. The reality is quite different: bad UX is a financial liability. It is an invisible cash leak sabotaging the entire company's efforts.
Here is how to reframe the debate around two sacred pillars for any SaaS leader: Acquisition and Retention.
The Acquisition Argument
Your company likely spends considerable sums on marketing (Ads, SEO, Trade Shows) to generate traffic. This is what we call CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost).
But what happens once that prospect, acquired at a high price, lands on your product for their free trial or demo? If they don't understand your value proposition in under 30 seconds, if they get lost in a complex onboarding, or if they can't find the "Start" button, they leave.
The verdict is brutal:
- Marketing did its job: the prospect came.
- Product failed: the prospect didn't convert.
Investing in UX isn't about "making it pretty." It's about optimizing the Conversion Rate. It's ensuring that every dollar spent on marketing has a real chance of turning into revenue. If you don't invest in UX, you are asking your marketing team to fill a leaking bucket. It is inefficient, and financially irresponsible.
The Retention Argument: The exorbitant cost of Churn
In the SaaS economic model, profitability doesn't happen at the signature; it happens over time (LTV or Lifetime Value). Your CEO's worst enemy is Churn (attrition rate).
There are two types of churn:
- Structural Churn: The client no longer needs the product (bankruptcy, change of business). We can't do anything about that.
- Involuntary (or Frictional) Churn: The client needs the product, but leaves because it is too frustrating, too slow, or too complex to use daily.
It is on this second point that UX acts as a direct financial lever. A frustrated user is a user actively looking for an alternative. Worse, they are a user consuming your customer support resources before leaving.
Replacing a lost client costs 5 to 25 times more than retaining one. Investing in a UX audit to identify and erase friction isn't an expense; it's an insurance policy to protect your ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue).
The killer argument for your CTO:
"Today, our developers spend about 30% of their time on 'rework' or maintenance linked to misunderstood interfaces. By investing in an upstream UX prototyping phase and a Design System, we don't slow down dev, we secure it. We reclaim that lost time to ship the roadmap faster and cleaner."
Convincing the CTO that UX isn't decoration, it's documentation
If you go to your CTO with mockups saying "look how beautiful it is," they will immediately think: "How long will this take me to code?" and "Is this going to break my architecture?".
To convince the technical team, you must present UX for what it truly is: visual technical specifications. Good UX doesn't slow down developers; it prevents them from coding useless or poorly designed features that will have to be redone three months later.
The 1-10-100 Rule: The exorbitant cost of "Rework"
It's a well-known rule in software development, but often forgotten during budget arbitrations:
- Fixing a design problem on a mockup (Design phase) costs $1.
- Fixing it during development (Dev phase) costs $10.
- Fixing it once the product is in production (Live phase) costs $100 (patches, technical debt, client frustration, support tickets).
UX is your mine-sweeping phase. Prototyping and testing an interface before writing a single line of code allows you to fail fast and cheap. Without UX, your developers aren't coding, they're gambling. And when they lose, the technical roadmap takes a six-month delay due to "rework" (redoing what was already done).
The Design System: Accelerating developer velocity
Many CTOs view Design as a source of chaos: hex codes changing on every screen, random margins, "spaghetti" CSS (they'll know what that means). Modern UX brings the absolute answer to this problem: the Design System.
It's not a creative constraint; it's a productivity tool. It is a library of pre-validated and documented components (buttons, fields, tables).
- For dev: No more reinventing the wheel. They don't code a "blue button" anymore; they call the component.
- For velocity: Integration is drastically accelerated. We assemble LEGO bricks instead of sculpting clay for every sprint.
Selling UX to the CTO means selling them the end of front-end improvisation.
Reducing Support Load (and dev burnout)
There is nothing worse for a talented developer than having to stop coding an exciting new feature to fix a minor bug or answer a Level 1 support ticket because the user didn't understand how to export a PDF.
A poorly designed interface generates noise. This noise inevitably ends up in the technical team's backlog as maintenance tickets. Better UX = Fewer support tickets = Developers focused on innovation.
The killer argument for your CTO:
"Today, our developers spend about 30% of their time on 'rework' or maintenance linked to misunderstood interfaces. By investing in an upstream UX prototyping phase and a Design System, we don't slow down dev, we secure it. We reclaim that lost time to ship the roadmap faster and cleaner."
The "Trojan Horse" Strategy: How to ask for budget without scaring them
You have the financial arguments for the CEO and the technical arguments for the CTO (sometimes the same person wears both hats). You are ready. But be careful: how you ask for the budget is just as critical as the arguments themselves.
If you walk in asking for a $50k envelope to "redo everything because the current one is ugly," you will hit a wall of skepticism. Here is how to enter through the side door to eventually renovate the whole house.
The mistake to avoid: The Total Overhaul
This is the classic trap. You want to do well, so you propose a "V2 Redesign." For a decision-maker, the word "Redesign" is terrifying. It is synonymous with:
- Huge risk: We change everything that works (sort of) for something unknown.
- Tunnel effect: We embark on 6 months of development without shipping anything to clients.
- Sunk cost: If V2 doesn't stick, we burned cash for nothing.
Never sell a revolution. Software companies hate revolutions; they like controlled evolution.
The winning approach: The Audit and the "Quick Win"
Instead of asking for a marriage, ask for a first date. Propose an experimental approach that limits financial risk and proves value quickly.
The 3-step method:
- The UX Audit: Don't ask for a development budget. Ask for a budget for an external audit or a user research phase. The goal is to obtain proof. It is factual, indisputable, and inexpensive.
- The "Quick Win" (Proof by example): Identify ONE critical flow (e.g., the signup funnel, project creation, or report export). Redesign this specific flow, test it, and measure the difference.
- The Extension (Deployment): Once you have mathematically proven that UX makes money on one page, ask for the budget for the rest of the application. It is no longer an expense; it is a predictive revenue model.
The killer argument to validate the budget:
"I'm not asking you to validate a complete redesign today. I propose investing a limited amount on an Audit and the optimization of a single critical screen: the signup funnel. If we prove we can increase conversion by 10% on this screen, we fund the rest of the project with the generated gains. We start small, we measure, and we decide."
Conclusion
It is time to change your posture. As long as you defend UX with adjectives ("intuitive," "modern," "pleasant"), you will be perceived as a source of expense.
The moment you use nouns ("Churn," "CAC," "Technical Debt"), you will be perceived as a strategic partner.
Your role isn't to make the software "pretty." Your role is to reduce the friction that stops money from coming in (Sales) and makes it leave too fast (Tech). UX is the only lever that acts on both sides simultaneously. So, put away your color palette for the next meeting, and take out your calculator.
Need ammo for your next budget meeting?
We are used to talking to CEOs and CTOs. We know how to transform interface problems into business opportunities.
Contact merveilleUX for a preliminary audit: we will identify your most costly friction points and give you the data-driven arguments to transform your UX into a growth engine.
