Hey, I’m Simon. A dad, a Geordie, and a designer who helps B2B SaaS companies turn confusing products into experiences people actually enjoy using.

I’ve worked on 30+ products, collaborating closely with founders, product managers, and engineers to fix the UX problems that cost customers and revenue.

I don’t do long research reports or get hung up on processes for the sake of it.

My approach is flexible and pragmatic: we figure out what the problem is, wireframe solutions, iterate to high-fidelity prototypes, and launch fast.Always keeping the user front and centre.

Here’s what that looks like in practice:

- 25% uplift in paid conversions + 2X ACV (SendX)- 30% revenue increase (SiteGuru)
- Upsold existing clients + converted new customers (RealTyme)
- Faster launch to win early customers (Ring4)

I love the variety of projects I get to work on: from payroll to email marketing software. And I love seeing founders and teams get excited about their product again.

It’s rewarding to know that the work I do not only improves the product but rejuvenates the entire team.

When I’m not designing, you’ll find me in Newcastle with my family, following football (I’m a recovering Manchester United fan), testing new tech, or spotting great, and sometimes terrible, UX in the wild.

If you want to fix your UX and create a product that actually converts and retains customers, DM for a chat.

Simon McCade

I’ve built a little something to help founders see exactly how much they could make from UX:

I've spoken to over 300 founders in the last 5+ years. They know UX makes money… but struggle to pin down how much.

So I built a simple ROI Calculator [it's in the comments]

It pulls from real project data I’ve gathered over the years, and lets you plug in the numbers that actually matter:

▪️Trial to paid conversions
▪️Retention + churn reduction
▪️Account upgrades + expansions
▪️Even things like support load and dev time saved

Pop in a few figures and it’ll show you the impact UX can actually have, without needing a maths degree or a 40-tab spreadsheet. 

(Trust me, I’ve tried both. Only one of them ends with me still having hair.)

Why did I build it?

Because if I want founders to understand the value product designers bring to the table, I should show it in their language: revenue, retention, runway.

Give it a whirl.

I help B2B SaaS companies convert & retain more customers through better product design.

UX design for early-stage vs for growth stage products.
Why the work feels so different:

There are two very different types of UX project. 
Both can be brilliant in their own way.

When I’m brought into an established SaaS product that already has paying customers and clear product market fit, the work feels grounded. 

There’s real data, real feedback and usually a clear sense of where the value is. 

You can add a huge amount here because every improvement ripples out to users who already rely on it. It’s steady and it’s satisfying.

Working on an MVP is a different energy entirely. 

You’re shaping something from thin air and you’re working closely with a founder who has a vision but no market proof yet. 

When they’re properly backed and have the budget to do it well, these projects can be exciting. 

You get to lay the foundations and steer the whole experience from day one.
Seeing a founder light up when their idea finally takes shape is always a lovely moment.

But I’ll be honest, MVPs can be hard work. 
Lots of unknowns. 
Scope that changes weekly. 

And without solid funding, the budget can become a bit of a battle. 

Starting from ground zero does mean fewer constraints between design and dev though, which can be a real breath of fresh air.

Both types of project stretch different muscles. Both can be rewarding. The important thing is knowing which one you’re walking into and making sure the setup is right from the start.

__

Hey, I'm Simon!
I'll help you fix your UX, so trial users convert and customers stick.
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Canva’s done an incredible job democratising design, but this dashboard is crying out for a spring clean. Cut the clutter, bring back the personality, and give users more control.

It’s busy, repetitive, and oddly impersonal for a brand that prides itself on creativity and clarity. 

Here’s where it could do with a serious tidy-up. 👇 

𝗜𝗻𝘃𝗶𝘁𝗲 𝗽𝗲𝗼𝗽𝗹𝗲 𝗶𝘀 𝗯𝘂𝗿𝗶𝗲𝗱.
If Canva wants teams to collaborate, why hide the button in grey? Make it loud and proud.

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗖𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗯𝘂𝘁𝘁𝗼𝗻’𝘀 𝗮 𝗯𝗼𝘁𝘁𝗹𝗲𝗻𝗲𝗰𝗸.
For a tool that’s all about speed and flow, one button for everything is a pain. Split it out so users can jump straight into the right type of design.

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗱𝗮𝘀𝗵𝗯𝗼𝗮𝗿𝗱 𝗳𝗲𝗲𝗹𝘀 𝗿𝗼𝗯𝗼𝘁𝗶𝗰.
What will you design today? is fine, but where’s the warmth? A simple greeting with a name would make it feel like Canva actually knows who I am.

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗶𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗮𝗻𝘆𝗼𝗻𝗲’𝘀 𝗴𝘂𝗲𝘀𝘀.
Doc? Sheet? What do they actually do? A few hover tooltips would fix that in minutes.

𝗥𝗶𝗴𝗶𝗱 𝗹𝗮𝘆𝗼𝘂𝘁.
Why can’t I reorder the top design types? It’s 2025 people work differently, let them customise it.

𝗦𝗵𝗮𝗿𝗲𝗱 𝘃𝘀. 𝗽𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗷𝗲𝗰𝘁𝘀 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗮 𝗺𝗲𝘀𝘀.
I shouldn’t have to squint to work out what’s mine and what’s shared. It’s confusing and slows people down.

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗛𝗲𝗹𝗽 𝗯𝘂𝘁𝘁𝗼𝗻’𝘀 𝗽𝗼𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗹𝗲𝘀𝘀.
A static question mark buried in the corner isn’t helping anyone. Make it contextual, make it useful, or remove it entirely.

Canva’s a great product, no question. It’s slick, it’s powerful, and it’s made design accessible to millions. 
But let’s be honest: the dashboard feels like it’s been designed by committee.

It’s not about changing what Canva is, it’s about helping it live up to its own promise of being beautifully simple.

What do you think? Let me know in the comments: 👇 
__

Hey, I'm Simon!
I'll help you fix your UX, so trial users convert and customers stick.
Follow me, Simon McCade, for regular design tips
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Most SaaS founders assume self-serve onboarding is the dream. 
But sometimes the fastest way to ship is to ditch the dream:

Concierge onboarding first. Self-serve later.

With concierge onboarding, they can:
▪️Personally help early adopters get set up
▪️Hear friction points live, instead of guessing
▪️Build real relationships with their first user
▪️Ship something functional without burning the team out

Why?
Because when you’re improving a product against the clock, scope is your enemy.
But learning isn’t. 

Self-serve will come, when we’ve got the insights to design it properly.

Sometimes the smartest UX move is the most human one:

__

Hey, I'm Simon!
I'll help you fix your UX, so trial users convert and customers stick.
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Everyone thinks good design comes AFTER growth. But, in my experience, good design CREATES growth. This client is the perfect example of that:

A few years back, RealTyme got in touch. 

They’d built a secure communication platform used by some of the most security-conscious organisations in the world. Governments, global enterprises, defence teams. 

But as the platform grew, so did the challenge of keeping everything clear, consistent, and easy to use. 

It’s something I see quite often, a great product that’s evolved quickly, and now needs to bring the design up to the same level as the tech.

So we took it one step at a time. Over three and a half years, I worked closely with their team to:

🔸Redesign the product experience end-to-end
🔸Establish a new visual language so everything felt consistent
🔸Build a design system to help their engineers move faster and more confidently
🔸Gradually shift the product from being sales-led to product-led

None of it happened overnight. But bit by bit, the experience started to feel purposeful, cleaner, and more connected.

The result was a product that not only looked better, but worked better. 

Users could get started faster, support requests dropped, and RealTyme saw a real commercial impact. Happier customers, stronger retention, and more conversions.

As their CEO, Onur, said afterwards:
'We not only gained competitive advantage but also increased customer satisfaction which started to pay off commercially by upselling through existing clients and converting new ones.'
__

Hey, I'm Simon!

I'll help you fix your UX, so trial users convert and customers stick.
Follow me, Simon McCade, for regular design tips
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I’ve never seen a discount fix a value problem in SaaS. 
Yet every November we give it another go... 🙄 

Every year around this time I see the same thing happen across SaaS. 

Big Black Friday discounts like this one from Adobe start flying about and for a moment it all feels a bit frantic. 

I get why teams do it. It brings people in the door quickly and it gives the numbers a short term lift. The trouble is what happens next.

When someone signs up because of a heavy discount, their expectations rarely match what the product is actually worth. Retention becomes harder. The relationship starts off on the wrong foot. 

One SaaS company that seems to understand this better than most is Notion. 

They never run Black Friday sales. They hold the line on their pricing because they know the value they deliver and they stick to it. 

For SaaS founders this is worth thinking about. When you start cutting money off the price, even with the best intentions, you might be training customers to wait for the next offer rather than building a stable long term relationship. 

Holding your ground on price can feel uncomfortable in the moment but it often pays off in the quality of the users you attract and keep.

__

Hey, I'm Simon!
I'll help you fix your UX, so trial users convert and customers stick.
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Founders often come to me feeling stuck. They’ve reached the  ‘Something feels off but we can’t put our finger on it’ stage. Design has become a bottleneck. Here’s why:

The front-end engineers are doing their best to make it look good and make it work, but design isn’t really in their wheelhouse. 

Things slow down. Progress stalls.

If you’re running a SaaS, but growth is slowing, design isn’t just about polish. It’s a growth lever.

And by the time I get involved, it’s usually reached the ‘stuck’ stage.

Here’s what I’ve learned after 12 years of helping teams through this:

📌 Early design decisions compound. 
What starts as a quick fix can turn into design debt that’s hard to unravel later.

📌 Founders put off design for too long. 
It feels non-essential at first, but once you’ve got users, design is growth. 

It’s what reduces friction, shortens time-to-value and helps turn trial users into paying customers.

📌 Calm comes from clarity. 

Once we map out the product experience, founders go from feeling “stuck” to feeling in control again.

Make your product easier to use, quicker to learn, and it’ll start doing more of the heavy lifting for you.
__

Curious if you’ve felt that same “bottleneck” moment?
What helped you move past it?

Hey, I'm Simon!
I'll help you fix your UX, so trial users convert and customers stick.
Follow me, Simon McCade, for regular design tips
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Founder @ Flow

Most SaaS companies don’t lose customers because of product. They never make it there in the first place because of crappy onboarding.

I’ve led marketing & growth at five SaaS scale-ups, and advised many more. Wherever I went, I saw the same pattern repeating itself: founders spending millions to acquire users, only to lose them in the first few clicks.

In 2022, I founded Flow to help B2B SaaS companies fix their onboarding gap, and turn trial users into loyal subscribers. Basically, my job is to speed-run users as quickly as possible to their first “aha” moment: that’s what really makes them stick.

Here’s how we do it:
- First we’re uncovering how users really experience your product (and where they drop off).
- Then we’re pinpointing onboarding friction that kills activation and conversions.
- Based on that, we build personalized onboarding flows across in-app, email, and beyond, using scalable low-code solutions.

Acquisition is expensive, retention is priceless - and onboarding is the bridge between the two. Our clients see faster activation, higher subscription rates, and less cancellations. They get users that stay, succeed, and become advocates.

If you’re leading a SaaS company and want your users to stick, I’d love to connect.

Jamie McDermott

A $5M ARR SaaS company I spoke with had almost no user analytics.

Let that sink in. Millions in revenue, but critical product decisions were being made in the dark.

This isn't a rare exception; it's a widespread problem. Teams are drowning in data but starving for insight because they don't track the right events, or worse, don't trust the data they have.

Without reliable metrics, you can't find your bottlenecks. You can't measure feature impact. You can't confidently build a roadmap.

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝗼𝗳 𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗮 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗼𝘀 𝗶𝘀𝗻'𝘁 𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗮 𝗺𝗲𝘀𝘀𝘆 𝗱𝗮𝘀𝗵𝗯𝗼𝗮𝗿𝗱. 𝗜𝘁'𝘀 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗱 𝗴𝗿𝗼𝘄𝘁𝗵.

To make your onboarding more valuable, do less for your customer.

It sounds counterintuitive. But doing everything for your customer isn't always a good thing.

In a recent client call, we mapped out their onboarding. It was thorough. The team handled everything: phone number setup, calendar configuration, contact list uploads. But I pointed out a hidden cost.

By automating these tasks 𝘧𝘰𝘳 the user, you're not just saving them time. You're potentially robbing them of their first 𝗮𝗵𝗮 𝗺𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁.

That feeling of satisfaction when a user connects their own calendar and sees it sync perfectly? That's a powerful win. It builds confidence and momentum. When your team does it on the back end, the user misses that moment of discovery.

The takeaway is simple. Don't just build a product. Engineer the user's first success. Guide them to their own "aha moment" instead of claiming it for yourself.

That's how you turn a setup process into an activation engine.

Your perception of your onboarding is wrong.

We hear this from founders constantly: "Our onboarding is pretty simple. Most people get it." They believe it. But their customer support data tells a different story.

On a recent project, we analyzed thousands of support tickets for a client who felt their onboarding was straightforward. The data was screaming the opposite. Ticket after ticket mentioned confusion, frustration, and difficulty with the initial setup.

The founder's perception was based on anecdotal feedback. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝘄𝗮𝘀 𝗯𝘂𝗿𝗶𝗲𝗱 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗶𝗿 𝘀𝘂𝗽𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁 𝘀𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺.

This is a massive blind spot for SaaS companies. You can't rely on vibes or what you 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘬 is happening. The unfiltered truth lives in the raw, unstructured data—your support chats, feedback surveys, and call transcripts.

That's where you find the real friction points killing your activation. Your customers are telling you exactly what's broken. You're just not listening in the right place.

Check out my thoughts on 'product tours'...



Thanks to the Chameleon team for letting me dig into their data.

You spent 3 weeks building the perfect product tour. 
Users spent 0.4 seconds dismissing it. 
Welcome to onboarding in 2025. 💀

Thanks to Jamie McDermott for putting together this great playbook 👇 
https://lnkd.in/dh7B62uk

The Hidden Metrics of Effective Product Tours | Chameleon

If your churn meetings feel like a game of hot potato, you’re not alone.

Too many leadership teams treat churn like a customer success problem. Easy target, right? But it's rarely just a CSM issue.

If your product is buggy, no amount of relationship-building will save you.

If you're selling to the wrong fit, no handoff deck fixes that.

If marketing promises things the product can't deliver, no QBR will make the disappointment go away.

And if your support is drowning in tickets, don’t expect a renewal, no matter how many check-ins you schedule.

Customer success can only patch so many holes. Most of the leaks start way upstream.

Retention is a mirror: it reflects every weakness in your funnel, your product, and your messaging.

If you want to move the needle, stop the blame game and start owning your slice of the problem. Product, sales, marketing, support, success - nobody gets a free pass.

Churn isn’t a department. It’s a symptom.

Treat the cause, not just the pain.

Stop prioritizing complex integrations. Find the most boring, repetitive task your user hates and automate it. That's your real product magic.

During a deep dive into a client's onboarding process, their Head of CS said something that cut through the noise:

"Automated workflows are definitely powerful with customers."

We'd been discussing complex EHR integrations and calendar setups. But her point was a reminder of what users 𝘵𝘳𝘶𝘭𝘺 value. It's not the technical connection itself. It's the magic of seeing a manual, time-consuming process simply disappear.

For their users, seeing a workflow trigger automatically based on an event in their system was the real "aha moment." It was the point where the product's value became tangible.

This is a critical lesson for prioritization.

Instead of getting lost in complex integrations, find the most painful manual task your user performs. Then, show them how your product makes it effortless. That's where you'll find the most powerful activation moments.

Here's our 3-step process for finding the biggest bottlenecks in any SaaS product.

You just need a system to find them.

We call it finding the bottleneck. Instead of guessing, we analyze everything to get a complete picture of the user journey.

Our process is simple but rigorous:

🔍 𝗔𝗻𝗮𝗹𝘆𝘇𝗲 𝗤𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗗𝗮𝘁𝗮: We plug into customer support tickets, online reviews, and feedback surveys to understand user frustration in their own words.

📊 𝗔𝗻𝗮𝗹𝘆𝘇𝗲 𝗤𝘂𝗮𝗻𝘁𝗶𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗗𝗮𝘁𝗮: We connect to tools like Amplitude and Mixpanel to pinpoint exactly where users drop off in the onboarding flow.

💡 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗰𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗗𝗼𝘁𝘀: We combine both data sets to form a clear hypothesis. 𝘞𝘩𝘺 are users getting stuck, and what's the highest-impact fix?

𝗧𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗶𝘀𝗻'𝘁 𝗮𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗻𝘆 𝗼𝗯𝗷𝗲𝗰𝘁𝘀. 𝗜𝘁'𝘀 𝗮𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗮 𝗿𝗲𝗽𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝘀𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘂𝘀𝗲𝗿 𝗳𝗿𝗶𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗼 𝗺𝗲𝗮𝘀𝘂𝗿𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗴𝗿𝗼𝘄𝘁𝗵.

Sales Navigator

li_at

JSESSIONID

🔥 66-67% of growth experiments fail at companies like Microsoft.

But it's not the ideas that suck.

I've audited 200+ failed experiments across SaaS companies. The pattern is always the same:

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝗶𝗹𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗞𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗿𝘀:
• No clear success criteria defined upfront
• Missing activation event definitions
• Zero interpretation rules for edge cases
• No timeline boundaries for decision-making

𝗛𝗲𝗿𝗲'𝘀 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗮𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸𝘀:

✅ 𝗛𝘆𝗽𝗼𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘀𝗶𝘀 𝗙𝗿𝗮𝗺𝗲𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸: "If we change X, then Y metric will improve by Z% because [user behavior assumption]"

✅ 𝗦𝘂𝗰𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗧𝗵𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗵𝗼𝗹𝗱𝘀: Define minimum detectable effect BEFORE you start

✅ 𝗔𝗰𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗟𝗶𝗻𝗸𝗮𝗴𝗲: Connect every test to your core activation events

✅ 𝗗𝗲𝗰𝗶𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗥𝘂𝗹𝗲𝘀: Pre-commit to what constitutes success, failure, and inconclusive

The companies that nail this? They turn experiments into predictable growth engines.

The ones that don't? They waste months on "promising" tests that lead nowhere.

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝘁𝗮𝗸𝗲𝗮𝘄𝗮𝘆: Great ideas without decision frameworks are just expensive guesses.

What's your biggest experimentation blind spot? Drop it below 👇

Raw data doesn't drive decisions. Structure does. If your user research ends in a Word doc, you've failed.

You just finished 20 user interviews. Now what?

You're left with a mountain of transcripts and raw insights. This is a classic bottleneck. The research is done, but turning it into a clear, actionable plan that gets the whole team aligned is a project in itself.

Instead of writing a 50-page report no one will read, we translate research directly into visual frameworks. Here's the simple process we're using for a client right now:

- 𝗠𝗮𝗽 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗖𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗿 𝗝𝗼𝘂𝗿𝗻𝗲𝘆: Create a simple, visual map of the user's experience from awareness to activation.

- 𝗗𝗲𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗝𝗼𝗯𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝗯𝗲 𝗗𝗼𝗻𝗲: For each stage, pull out the core JTBD from your research. What is the user 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 trying to accomplish?

- 𝗣𝗿𝗶𝗼𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗶𝘇𝗲 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗮 𝗠𝗼𝗱𝗲𝗹: Use a framework like the Kano Model to categorize features into must-haves, performance-based, and delighters.

The output isn't a static document. It's a living FigJam board that becomes the foundation for the project, sparking conversation and driving the roadmap.

Stop writing reports. Start building shared understanding.

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