- Aesthetics - 🥀
It surrounds us everywhere, adding beauty and color to our lives.
We find it in the expected places — landscapes, architecture, people —
but also in less obvious ones: a well-designed codebase, project management methodologies, or the UI of a banking app.
But when aesthetics starts consuming our attention and resources as business owners, it can come at the expense of our product's functionality and efficiency.
A few months ago, I signed up for an omni-channel service from one of the largest companies in the world. The platform consolidates all customer communication channels into a single dashboard — the kind of tool every business in the digital age needs.
One of the things I loved about it was its clean, aesthetic, and modern design. It was pleasant to use, the interface was intuitive and comfortable, and it offered a nearly unlimited range of options.
After a trial period and paying a full year upfront, it became clear that the interface was a shell concealing an obviously broken and non-functional system.
The beautiful buttons were in exactly the right place — but they didn't do what they were supposed to. Simple, basic operations were impossible to perform independently, and the result was waiting days on end for customer support for every minor change.
Since my time is worth more than the subscription fee, I chose to cut my losses and close the account.
I drew important lessons from this experience, which I'm now applying to the software we're about to finish developing — SyncShop.
**Efficiency matters more than design:**
I know a major Israeli corporation up close, where invoices worth millions sent to top-tier clients look worse than a gas station receipt.
I also know small businesses that invest a significant portion of their budget choosing the right font and color palette for their website, without seeing any growth in sales — even over time.
As product sellers or service providers, the vast majority of our efforts should be focused on becoming the best in our field — before worrying about our website's design.
A product or business's core strength lies in how well it delivers on what it promises. If the software or service being sold is poor, no modern design will cover that up.
**Let your customers manage on their own:**
Don't sell a bad product with excellent service — sell an excellent product and you'll never need to provide service at all.
Customers need the ability to solve challenges themselves, without running to your expensive, resource-draining customer support team.
Build a great product, create a library of video and text guides that walk users through solving any issue or difficulty they encounter, and a single person will be enough to send the relevant guide link when needed — even for a very large user base.
Once everything works the way it should, good aesthetics can add a great deal — but save it for last.