Understanding the business side: How to actually get your designs approved
Ever walked into a meeting with a design you KNOW is good, only to have stakeholders tear it apart because “it doesn’t align with business goals”? Or been asked “but how much revenue will this generate?” when you’re literally still in the wireframe phase?
So why do so many of us still feel like our leaders “just don’t get it”?
Because business people think in numbers. Revenue, conversion, acquisition. And we think in flows, layouts, and user journeys. We’re speaking different languages about the same thing: creating value.
Here’s the mindset shift: being customer-centric and being business-centric are actually the same thing. No product that customers don’t like and don’t buy makes money. We just need to frame our work in terms that resonate.
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The 4-Step Framework
1. Understanding users and feeling their emotions~
We’re great at empathizing with users. Time to extend that superpower to our business stakeholders. Understanding their perspective like what metrics they’re measured on, what keeps them up at night helps you frame your work in ways that land.
Business strategy usually boils down to three things:
Increase sales/conversion (acquire new customers or retain existing ones)
Grow into new markets (expand to new customer segments)
Reduce costs (often by cutting customer service calls)
2. Collaborate
Include business stakeholders in brainstorms and user research sessions. When they see firsthand the pain customers experience, they become advocates for your solutions, not roadblocks.
3. Measure
This is where most designers struggle. You can create beautiful, user-friendly designs all day, but if you can’t measure and communicate their impact, you won’t get the recognition (or resources) you deserve.
Measure the right thing at the right time.
Discovery phase: Do we have the right customer? Do we understand the problem?
Solution validation: Are users engaging? Are they satisfied?
Product-market fit: Are we converting users?
Scale: What’s the financial impact?
Don’t let stakeholders ask “how much revenue will this make?” when you’re still figuring out if you have the right customer. Push back with “we’ll get there, right now we’re validating whether this solution actually works.”
4. Communicate
Walking into a room and saying “customers will love this” gets you nowhere. Walking in and saying “this will increase credit card payments by 200% because we’re reducing onboarding friction from 10 clicks to 3” gets you attention.
Same design. Same value. Different framing.
The 5 Questions to Ask at Project Kickoff
Before you design anything, get answers to these:
What is the goal? (Be specific. “increase revenue” is too vague)
How does this goal align with business strategy? (Acquisition? Retention? New market?)
Who is the target customer? (Get specific about the segment)
What does success look like? (How will we know we succeeded?)
What are the business metrics? (The numbers that matter)
If you can’t answer these confidently, you’re not ready to design yet. And if your stakeholders can’t answer them either? That’s your first deliverable: helping them get aligned.
The Business Terms Cheat Sheet
Here’s a real example of how this framework plays out:
The project: Payment processing tool for law firms
Business goal: Become the market leader with 100% revenue growth in 2 years
Strategy: Increase transactions per customer + acquire new customers
Success metrics: Increase credit card payments by 200%
Design focus: Easy onboarding, great first-use experience, simple credit card processing
See how it narrows down? Instead of “make the payment experience better” (vague), the team focused on three specific things tied directly to business metrics. They could have designed 100 features — but they picked the three that would actually move the needle.
The Before & After
Before: “We really believe this will work because our customers will like it.”
After: “This design will enable customers to process credit card payments in under 3 clicks, which based on our testing will increase payment completion rates by 40%, leading to an estimated revenue increase of $2M annually.”
Same design. Same value. But the second version gets budget approved.
You don’t have to become a business person. You just need to understand enough to connect your work to what business stakeholders care about. When you do that:
You move from tactical executor to strategic partner
You gain trust (and creative freedom)
You get resources for the bold ideas
You elevate the entire design profession
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Events
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Resources
If you’re a new designer serious about building these kinds of concrete skills to land your dream job, our Cohort 22 10-week advanced internship is accepting applications on a rolling basis. (online, remote)
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Magic Patterns, new vibe coding and design prototying tool! Try it here
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