5 Product Design Mistakes That Cost Companies Millions and How Small UX Tweaks Can Fix Them

In today’s hyper-competitive digital economy, one small product design mistake can quietly drain millions of dollars, frustrate loyal users, and hand competitors an open invitation to steal market share. 

What’s worse? These failures often have nothing to do with missing features or poor technology.

Confusing onboarding. Hidden buttons. A checkout process that takes too long. Tiny missteps that seem harmless on a design board but snowball into massive revenue losses once they hit real customers.

The silver lining? These disasters are rarely fixed by expensive redesigns. More often, it’s small UX tweaks like a shorter form, a clearer error message, a button placed where users expect it to rescue companies from bleeding money.

The mistake: First impressions matter and in product design, they’re everything. Yet many apps overload users during their very first interaction with endless sign-up forms, lengthy tutorials, or a feature dump that feels more like homework than discovery. Instead of sparking curiosity, this creates friction. The result? Users drop off before they even experience the product’s core value.

The cost: A 2022 report found that 74% of users abandon apps within the first week due to poor onboarding. That’s millions in wasted acquisition spend.

Example: Quibi, the $1.75 billion short-form video app, is a cautionary tale. Instead of letting users instantly sample its shows, it forced them through a paywall, clunky tutorials, and a wall of content with little personalization. In the first 3 months, Quibi lost over 90% of its subscribers. Within six months, Quibi shut down, becoming one of the costliest onboarding failures in tech history.

The fix: Simplify onboarding with progressive disclosure. Duolingo does this brilliantly: users start learning immediately, while extra features like streaks and leaderboards appear later, once they’re already invested.

The mistake: Microinteractions are the tiny details that guide users through a product. They include things like the animation on a button when you tap it, the confirmation message after you submit a form, or the progress indicator when a page is loading. These moments may feel small, but they communicate feedback and build trust. When designers treat them as an afterthought, users are left guessing whether their action worked, if the system is frozen, or if they made a mistake. That uncertainty breaks the flow of the experience and often pushes users to abandon the task altogether.

The cost: According to Baymard Institute, unclear checkout errors account for 22% of cart abandonments, costing ecommerce companies billions annually.

Example: PayPal once lost countless transactions because its error messages didn’t specify whether a failed payment was due to the bank, the card, or PayPal itself.

The fix: Add clear, empathetic microinteractions. Stripe, for instance, tells you exactly what went wrong during payment and how to fix it (“Your card expired—please update details”). That transparency builds trust and reduces friction.

The mistake: Many companies believe that adding more features makes their product stronger or more competitive. Instead of focusing on what users truly value, they chase parity with rivals and end up creating an interface that feels crowded and overwhelming. The problem is not the availability of features but how they are presented. When everything is competing for attention, nothing feels simple or intuitive. Users face decision fatigue, spend more time searching for the core function they came for, and may eventually leave for a product that feels lighter and easier to use.

The cost: Microsoft’s early Word versions were infamous for “feature bloat.” Users felt overwhelmed, creating an opening for simpler tools like Google Docs, which captured millions of users by focusing on speed and clarity.

Example: Evernote lost market share because its interface became cluttered with too many add-ons, while rivals like Notion rose by offering a cleaner, customizable experience.

The fix: Apply user-centered design. Hide rarely used features under expandable menus and highlight daily-use actions. Slack, for instance, keeps its core chat interface clean while tucking away integrations and advanced features in side menus. 

A strong example of people-first design comes from Sparklin’s work with CaratLane, India’s leading omni-channel jewelry brand. Customers in CaratLane stores were often confused about gold prices, fees, and offers, which made the buying process slow and dependent on store associates. 

Sparklin addressed this by creating the EZ Sales app, giving associates everything they needed in one place: inventory, customization, offers, reward points, past orders, and faster billing. The result was dramatic. Payment time dropped from 19 minutes to just 2.5 minutes, an 800% improvement, while keeping the focus squarely on customer needs rather than extra features.

The mistake: Too often, products are designed with only the “average” user in mind. This means critical elements like color contrast, screen-reader compatibility, keyboard navigation, and touch-friendly buttons are overlooked. When accessibility is treated as optional, large groups of users are excluded from the experience altogether. For someone who is visually impaired, color choices can determine whether text is readable. For someone with motor difficulties, small tap targets can make a product nearly impossible to use. Beyond frustrating millions of potential users, an inaccessible design can also lead to legal action and negative publicity that damages a brand’s reputation.

The cost: Domino’s Pizza lost a high-profile lawsuit when a blind customer couldn’t order through their app. Beyond legal fees, the bad PR damaged customer trust.

Example: Target, on the other hand, invested heavily in accessible design early. Their website supports screen readers, alt text, and keyboard navigation, turning accessibility into a brand strength.

The fix: Bake in accessible design principles from the start. Apple is a leader in this area.  Their VoiceOver screen reader and dynamic text sizing don’t just support users with disabilities; they improve usability for everyone.

The mistake: One of the most common design errors is hiding the very actions that matter most to users. Critical functions such as checkout, search, or access to customer support are often burried inside complex menus or tucked behind unfamiliar gestures. While this might seem like a way to keep the interface clean, it forces users to work harder to accomplish simple tasks. When someone cannot quickly find the “Buy” button, the help option, or the search bar, frustration builds. Instead of completing the action, many users simply give up and abandon the product altogether.

The cost: Baymard Institute revealed 17% of cart abandonments happen because checkout is too complex or hidden. For Amazon, that would mean billions in potential lost sales if they hadn’t optimized it.

Example: Instagram once hid the “log out” button deep in its menus, frustrating users with multiple accounts. Competitors like TikTok made account switching seamless, gaining an edge with creators.

The fix: Make key actions obvious and persistent. Amazon’s “Buy Now” button is always visible, reducing decision time and friction. Airbnb does the same by keeping “Book” sticky on the screen.

Every confusing step, hidden feature, or clumsy message is a crack in the foundation of your business. The companies that win are those that obsess over the invisible details most teams ignore. Because in the end, users don’t measure your product by what it can do, but by how it makes them feel.