From UX Friction to New Revenue: Seeing Hidden Opportunities

Recently, my wife tried to surprise me with a cruise for our 18th anniversary.

She spent months planning and booking the trip while keeping it a secret. Then an envelope arrived at our house with giant words across the front:

LUGGAGE TAGS.

Surprise uncovered. Months of effort gone in a single moment. My wife was so disappointed and that, for me, was heartbreaking.

Nothing had technically gone wrong, though. The reservation was made, the payment went through, the documents were generated and the luggage tags arrived exactly where they were supposed to.

From the company's perspective, the transaction worked.

The experience didn't.

My wife wasn't just booking a cruise. She was planning a very meaningful surprise, and the company had designed for the first thing without considering the second.

That is the kind of thing I think of as low-hanging UX fruit: the small opportunities sitting around a customer experience that are easy to miss because nothing appears to be broken.

But the more I think about it, the more I believe these aren't just UX opportunities.

They can be marketing opportunities. Product opportunities. Positioning opportunities. Even entirely new revenue opportunities.

And right now, when it has become easier than ever for one person to turn an idea into a working tool, that matters a lot.

Why do businesses miss this stuff?

I don't think the answer is that companies suddenly stopped caring about customers. After years working in UX research, I think much of it comes down to two very human forces: incentives and fear.

Businesses have to make money. Employees have goals to hit, departments have budgets to justify and leaders have stakeholders asking what happened this month, this quarter and this year. Behind all of that are people who want to keep their jobs, pay their mortgages, take care of their families and prove that the work they are doing matters.

So attention naturally gravitates toward things that create obvious, measurable results.

Change the pricing structure and more people upgrade? You can measure that. Add an upsell and average order value increases? You can measure that too. Reduce fulfillment costs by 8%? There is a number for the presentation. Find another surface for the logo and increase brand impressions? Marketing can report it.

None of these are bad things. Revenue, costs and growth matter. The problem is that, over time, we become very good at seeing the opportunities our incentives have trained us to see.

The safer idea is often the one with the shortest line between the work and the money.

That can eventually lead businesses into some strange places.

Amazon is an unusually direct example. The Federal Trade Commission accused the company of enrolling consumers in Prime without adequate consent and knowingly making it difficult for people to cancel. The FTC specifically alleged that Amazon leadership slowed or rejected changes that would have made cancellation easier because those changes negatively affected the company's bottom line. In September 2025, Amazon agreed to a $2.5 billion settlement resolving the case, including $1.5 billion in consumer refunds and requirements to make Prime enrollment and cancellation clearer and easier.

From one side of a spreadsheet, every person who doesn't cancel this month can look like retention. From the customer's side, making it difficult to leave can feel like being trapped.

When we repeatedly ask, "How can we get more from this customer?", organizations become remarkably good at finding answers.

My question is what we stop seeing when that becomes the dominant way we look at an experience.

PlayStation is showing us this tension right now

In July 2026, Sony announced that it will stop producing physical discs for new PlayStation games beginning in January 2028. The company says the decision reflects changing consumer preferences and the broader move from physical to digital media. Sony's own reporting certainly shows that shift. Digital downloads made up well over 70% of full-game software sales in each of the first three quarters of its 2025 fiscal year.

From a business perspective, it isn't difficult to understand the decision. Physical products have to be manufactured, packaged, transported, stocked and sold. Digital distribution removes much of that infrastructure.

Customers, however, are not necessarily experiencing the decision as a distribution improvement.

They are talking about ownership.

PlayStation's own current terms are quite explicit. When someone purchases a digital product through the PlayStation Store, they receive a personal license to use it. That license generally cannot be transferred, and the terms state that the customer does not own the product.

That distinction becomes much more important when the physical alternative disappears. A game disc can be put on a shelf, loaned to someone, sold, bought used or handed down. A digital license operates under the rules of the company providing it.

A quick Forrester poll after Sony's announcement gives us a glimpse of the tension. Among 149 PlayStation users surveyed in the United States, United Kingdom and Canada, 66% said they did not want the change and 71% believed it primarily benefited Sony and its shareholders. It was a small, directional study, so I wouldn't treat it as representative of every PlayStation customer, but the reaction is interesting because of what it reveals.

Sony may be looking at its numbers and seeing the logical next step. Customers are looking at the same decision and asking something else:

If I'm paying for this, what do I actually get to own?

The interesting part isn't deciding that one side is right and the other is wrong. It is noticing that they are evaluating the same decision through completely different definitions of value.

Sony sees efficiency, distribution costs and a market that has already moved heavily toward digital purchasing. Customers may see control, permanence, resale value and trust.

Once you understand what the customer believes they are losing, a completely different set of opportunities becomes visible. Could digital licenses become transferable? Could families pass libraries along? Could customers have stronger guarantees of long-term access? Could digital products preserve more of what people valued about physical ownership?

Maybe some of those ideas are impractical. That isn't really the point.

The point is that the obvious business decision is rarely the only opportunity sitting there.

What could this moment become?

That brings me back to our cruise.

This will be our first cruise with this particular company, which means that envelope was also one of our first real experiences with the brand.

Instead of an envelope stamped LUGGAGE TAGS, the company could have mailed the same materials in a large, plain envelope. That one small change could have protected a surprise, whether someone was surprising a spouse with an anniversary trip or surprising an entire family with a vacation.

But there was an even bigger opportunity.

That envelope could have become a welcome package. The luggage tags could still be inside, but perhaps they arrive with simple instructions for first-time cruisers, information about what happens next and something designed to start building excitement about the trip.

Now one interaction is doing several jobs. It protects the surprise, makes an unfamiliar process easier, starts building anticipation and creates a fantastic first impression of a company we are about to trust with our vacation.

Imagine receiving a thoughtful welcome package and showing it to friends. Imagine parents using it to reveal the trip to their children. Imagine someone filming the whole thing and posting it to Instagram or TikTok because it was unexpectedly fun, thoughtful or beautiful.

Suddenly, that little welcome kit is doing far more than delivering luggage tags. It is building excitement before the trip begins, creating a memorable first impression, giving customers something they want to share and generating word of mouth and social content without asking for either.

That one small experience has become a loyalty tool and a marketing tool at the same time.

Try measuring that with an NPS score.

You might eventually see some of the impact in referrals, repeat bookings or social mentions, but the real value began with something much harder to capture: someone inside the business noticing an opportunity and asking a better question.

Not, "Where else can we put our logo?"

But:

"What could this moment become?"

There is research showing that businesses still miss surprisingly basic versions of this opportunity. Baymard Institute's gifting research, updated in 2025, found that 46% of applicable ecommerce sites they benchmarked didn't allow shoppers to explicitly designate an order as a gift. Their usability testing found people cared about things like hiding prices, adding a personal message and knowing exactly what the recipient would receive. When people couldn't confidently place an order as a gift, some abandoned the purchase altogether.

Now consider what our cruise transaction probably looks like in the company's analytics.

Reservation completed. Payment received. Documents sent. Luggage tags delivered. No support call. No cancellation.

Nothing in those numbers says, "We just ruined an anniversary surprise."

It also doesn't say, "We just missed an opportunity to create an incredible first impression."

That information exists in our story.

Your customers have stories your dashboard doesn't

I spent years working in UX research, and I absolutely believe in data. Analytics can tell you where people leave, what they click, whether they buy, whether they return and whether something changes after you make an improvement.

But metrics can only measure what they can see.

They don't know my wife was planning a surprise. They don't know someone bought your course because they need to solve a particular problem before tomorrow morning. They don't know a customer has quietly invented a workaround because one small piece of your SaaS product doesn't fit the way they actually work. They don't know that someone downloaded your PDF, read three pages and then created their own spreadsheet because what they really needed was a tool.

Those things live in people's stories.

Unfortunately, companies appear to be hearing fewer of those stories directly. Qualtrics studied more than 23,000 consumers around the world and found that businesses are receiving less experience feedback than they were in 2021. People were most likely to share both good and bad experiences with friends and family rather than directly with the company. The research also found something important for anyone relying heavily on standardized feedback: surveys skewed more positive, while email and phone feedback skewed more negative.

Your customers may already be talking about the opportunities in your business.

They just may not be talking about them with you.

Don't ask for a score. Ask what happened.

This is where being small can be an advantage.

We have become incredibly good at collecting quantitative data. Conversion rates, retention, churn, clicks, completion rates and NPS scores can all be watched from a dashboard.

Qualitative data matters just as much, and I would argue it deserves more attention right now.

Customers are becoming less forgiving when experiences disappoint them, while companies are struggling to keep up with changing expectations. PwC's 2025 Customer Experience Survey found that 70% of executives believe customer expectations are evolving faster than their companies can adapt. Twenty-nine percent of consumers said they had stopped using or buying from a brand because of a poor customer experience, and 52% had stopped buying because of a bad experience with a company's products or services.

You don't need a UX research department, an expensive research platform or 500 survey responses to start understanding what is happening behind your numbers.

You can begin with five people and a conversation.

Instead of sending an NPS question or asking someone to rate their experience from one to five, ask:

"Tell me about the last time you did this. What were you trying to accomplish?"

Then listen.

A score can tell you someone gave the experience a seven. A conversation can tell you that they were trying to surprise their wife with an anniversary cruise and the envelope you mailed to their house gave it away.

Those are very different kinds of information.

Let people explain what they were doing beforehand, why they needed something, what they expected, what was getting in their way, what they tried instead and what happened afterward.

There are certain phrases I learned to listen for during research because what follows them can be incredibly useful. "I thought..." often reveals an expectation. "I assumed..." can reveal something that wasn't communicated. "I wasn't sure..." points toward uncertainty. "So I ended up..." may reveal a workaround. "Luckily..." can tell you something outside your experience rescued it. "I wish..." is always worth exploring.

And one of my favorites is, "It's not a big deal, but..."

It genuinely may not be a big deal.

Or it may be the beginning of your next business idea.

The thing they complain about may be the thing you should build

This is where qualitative research becomes especially interesting for SaaS founders, coaches, course creators and anyone using today's builder tools to turn ideas into software.

You are not only looking for things to fix.

You are looking for hidden opportunities.

Quantitative data may tell you that 12% of people abandoned a purchase, 40% never finished a course or a particular feature rarely gets used. Those numbers matter, but they don't necessarily tell you what to make next.

Conversations can.

If you hear several customers say, "This was supposed to be a surprise," you may discover that plain packaging isn't just a fulfillment decision. It could become part of your positioning:

We use plain packaging because we can keep a secret.

Now a customer frustration has become a marketing campaign and a reason to choose you over someone else.

If you're a coach and you keep hearing, "I don't need to understand everything about advertising. I just need to know how to create an ad on a small budget," that conversation may have just revealed a completely different product opportunity.

Maybe you don't spend months building a 40-module advertising course.

Maybe you build a focused app that helps small businesses create low-budget campaigns.

Now you have something people can return to every month. You can improve it over time, add features, update recommendations as advertising platforms change and create new content around the problems your users keep bringing to you.

What began as one customer saying, "I just need help doing this one thing," may become a recurring-revenue product that is easier to evolve and much more closely tied to what people actually need.

The same thing applies to lead magnets.

For years, the default has been to take what you know and turn it into a PDF. A checklist. A worksheet. A guide.

There is nothing wrong with those things, but sometimes the story someone tells you reveals that information isn't actually what they need.

Maybe your PDF teaches people how to calculate something. Why not make the calculator?

Maybe your worksheet asks them to choose between five strategies. Why not make an assessment that helps them choose?

Maybe your guide walks people through a process. Why not build the process into a small interactive tool?

Maybe the thing you currently give away to collect an email address could become something useful enough that people come back to it, share it or eventually pay for more.

That is a much bigger opportunity than improving the PDF.

For SaaS founders, listen for the work happening outside your product

One of the most valuable things a SaaS founder can hear is:

"Then I export it and..."

Pay attention to what comes next.

"I export it and put everything into a spreadsheet."

"I copy it over to another tool."

"I send it to myself and then organize it."

"I download it and manually..."

That is where the job your customer is trying to accomplish extends beyond the boundaries of the product you built.

It doesn't automatically mean you should add another feature. It means you have discovered something worth investigating.

What are they actually trying to finish?

Why does your product stop before they get there?

Is the missing piece something your existing product should handle? Could it become an integration? Is it valuable enough to become its own focused tool? Does it reveal that customers are hiring your product for a different job than the one you thought you were solving?

Those are product decisions that rarely appear fully formed in analytics.

They emerge from hearing the story.

For course creators and coaches, listen for where learning becomes work

There is another version of this happening throughout online education.

Suppose someone buys a course because they want to solve a particular problem. The creator has an obvious way to demonstrate value: give them more.

Forty modules. Ten hours of video. Worksheets. Bonus lessons. Templates. A huge resource library.

There is plenty to put on the sales page, and the amount of material becomes part of the justification for the price.

But that isn't necessarily how the person buying it defines value.

If I need to solve one problem, a focused 30-minute lesson that gets me to the answer may be far more valuable than 20 hours of material I now have to work through.

Research into microlearning supports the value of that focused approach. A 2024 systematic review of 40 studies describes microlearning as targeted, action-oriented, bite-sized content designed to accomplish specific objectives in a short amount of time.

That doesn't mean long courses are bad. Sometimes someone wants the education and the depth.

It means quantity isn't automatically value.

The more useful question is:

What did this person come here trying to accomplish?

Then ask whether teaching is actually the best way to help them accomplish it.

A coach who once sold a worksheet could turn that process into a small interactive tool. Someone who teaches people how to evaluate an idea might create an app that walks them through the evaluation and gives them something useful at the end. A process that once required an hour-long lesson might become a focused tool that helps the person do the work instead of simply learning how.

Your expertise doesn't have to become another course.

It can become software.

And if you're vibe coding, don't start with the app

This may be the most important lesson for people entering the builder economy right now.

The tools are astonishing.

You can describe an idea and, sometimes within hours, have something that looks and behaves like a real product.

That has dramatically shortened the distance between an idea and software.

It has not necessarily shortened the distance between an idea and something people need.

That distinction matters.

It is very easy to begin with:

"I want to make a productivity app."

"I want to make a CRM for coaches."

"I have an idea for a content tool."

Then you start building.

A better starting point is often a story.

"What keeps happening to this person that shouldn't be this difficult?"

What are they doing now?

Where are they improvising?

What are they paying for but not really getting?

What are they trying to accomplish that currently requires three tools, a spreadsheet and a YouTube tutorial?

What do they keep saying they "just need"?

Then ask:

What part of that could a small tool do for them?

Now you aren't beginning with an app idea and searching for a problem that justifies it.

You're beginning with an experience worth improving.

That gives you something much stronger to build.

How to find your own low-hanging opportunities

With the holiday season approaching, this is a great time to look at your own business and ask where a little more thoughtfulness could create a much better experience, or even reveal something new to build.

You don't need to audit everything. Pick one customer journey and work through five steps.

1. Find the story. Talk to five people who have actually experienced the thing you're interested in. Ask what they were trying to accomplish and what happened. Don't restrict the conversation to your product because their problem probably doesn't begin and end there.

2. Find the mismatch. Write down what your business provided and what the person actually needed. The cruise company needed to deliver luggage tags. My wife needed to protect a surprise. A course creator may be delivering education when someone actually needs a finished result.

3. Look for repetition. One story is interesting. When you start hearing versions of the same problem repeatedly, pay attention. The wording may change while the underlying need stays the same.

4. Ask what form the solution should take. Does this need a better experience? A new marketing message? A feature? A service? A short piece of content? An interactive lead magnet? A small standalone app? Don't assume the solution has to look like the thing you currently sell.

5. Build the smallest useful version and test it. You don't need to turn every insight into a six-month project. Make the smallest thing that lets you learn whether you've actually found something valuable.

Then bring the quantitative data back in.

Did people use it? Did they return? Did it reduce support requests? Did they share it? Did the new positioning convert better? Did people pay? Did they keep paying?

Stories and numbers are not competing approaches.

Quantitative data is incredibly useful for telling you what happened at scale and whether your changes made a difference.

Qualitative research can reveal what you didn't know to build in the first place.

There is money in paying attention

Customer experience can get treated as the nice work you do after the serious revenue work is finished.

I think that is a mistake.

PwC's 2025 research found that 29% of consumers had stopped buying from a brand because of a poor customer experience online or in person, while more than half had stopped buying because of a bad experience with its products or services.

Trust affects sales. Ease affects sales. Feeling understood affects loyalty. Being memorable gives people something worth talking about.

But paying attention can do something else too.

It can show you where the next opportunity is.

The customer who says, "This was supposed to be a surprise," may have just given you your next campaign.

The person who says, "Then I have to copy everything into a spreadsheet," may have just shown you your next feature.

The course buyer who says, "I just need someone to help me do this one thing," may have just given you the idea for a new app.

And the person saying, "I wish someone would just..." may be telling you exactly what to build.

That is the part I think matters so much right now.

A few years ago, hearing those stories might have led to a feature request that sat on a roadmap, a worksheet added to a course or an idea that was simply too expensive to pursue.

Today, one person can hear a problem, shape an idea, build a small version and put it in front of real people faster and more affordably than was possible before.

The ability to build is becoming less rare.

The ability to notice what is worth building may become the real advantage.

Some of the best opportunities in your business may never appear in your dashboard.

They are the low-hanging fruit nobody has been incentivized to notice.