UI UX design services: what you are buying and how to choose a partner.

Search for UI UX design services and you find page after page of agencies promising better experiences. Most proposals use the same words: research, wireframes, prototypes, design systems. What is harder to see is what you actually get, in what order, and what it costs you later when a step is skipped.

This guide answers that from the buyer’s side. It explains what UX design and UI design are, what a complete service includes, how the process runs and how to choose a partner, with sources you can check. At Viralistic we design websites in Figma and build them in Astro, from Amsterdam, so we describe our own approach where it helps.

What is UX design, and what is UI design?

UX design is the practice of shaping the whole experience someone has with your business, product or service. UI design is the visible layer of that experience: the interface people read, tap and click.

Nielsen Norman Group, the research firm founded by Don Norman and Jakob Nielsen, defines user experience as all aspects of the end user’s interaction with the company, its services and its products. That is wider than a screen. Their example is a film review website. Even with a perfect search interface, the experience is poor for someone looking for a small independent release if the database only holds films from the major studios.

UI design covers typography, colour, layout, buttons, forms, icons and motion. A UI designer makes the interface legible, consistent and true to the brand. Good UI makes a sound structure usable and credible. It cannot rescue a confusing one.

UX/UI design is simply the umbrella term for both. Many agencies and smaller teams offer them as one service, which works well as long as structure comes before styling.

UX vs UI: the difference at a glance

UX decides how something works. UI decides how it looks and feels while it works.

Put simply: UX decides where the door goes. UI decides what the door looks like and how the handle feels in your hand.

What UI UX design services include

A complete UI UX design service includes research, information architecture, wireframes, a prototype, visual UI design and testing, plus a handoff that the build team can work from. If a proposal starts at visual design, you are buying screens, not UX.

Software UI design versus website UX

UX UI software design services and website UX share their methods, but not their priorities. Software interfaces revolve around repeated tasks: dashboards, forms, settings and user roles. Websites revolve around first visits: orientation, trust and a clear next step.

Viralistic designs and builds websites and brand systems, not custom software. If you are planning a software product, our guide to commissioning custom software covers when it pays off and how to start.

The UX design process, step by step

A sound UX process moves from understanding to making to testing. The depth varies with budget, but these six steps return in every serious project.

1. Research. Who visits, what are they trying to do, and where do they drop off today? Conversations, analytics, search data and the questions your team answers every week are all useful sources.
2. Information architecture. This is the organisation of your content: which pages exist, what they are called and how they relate. Nielsen Norman Group describes it as the backbone of a site. It is not part of the visible interface, but it informs it, and a first pass is needed before navigation is designed.
3. Wireframes. A wireframe shows what goes where on a page, without colour or imagery. Because the styling is missing, the discussion stays on content and flow rather than taste.
4. Prototype. A clickable version of the design shows how screens follow each other before anyone writes code. In Figma, the prototype lives in the same file as the design.
5. UI design. Typography, colour, imagery and components, built on your brand identity. If that identity is not settled yet, a house style comes first.
6. Testing. Jakob Nielsen showed that a test with five users uncovers roughly 85 percent of usability problems, and that three small rounds of five beat one large study (Nielsen Norman Group). The model behind that finding was presented by Nielsen and Thomas Landauer at the INTERCHI’93 conference in Amsterdam. It holds for comparable users, so distinct audiences each need their own small round.

Testing continues after launch, with real behaviour instead of a prototype. Our guide to conversion rate optimisation picks up from there.

How this looks at Viralistic

Our web design phases follow the same logic. The foundation phase produces a brand script and a sitemap: every page the site needs and how the pages connect. These merge into a wireframe that deliberately has no design yet. Only when the structure holds do we turn the stylescape into a brand guide and a high-fidelity design in Figma, which we then build in Astro. Each phase ends with a feedback moment, and the next one builds on your agreement.

For Gre-Go, a booking and collaboration platform for transport in the north of the Netherlands, we wrote brand stories for travellers, for chauffeurs, and for hotels and business partners, and produced the sitemap and wireframes. You can read the Gre-Go case.

Why good UX lowers development cost

Good UX lowers development cost because it catches mistakes while they are still cheap to fix. Moving a block in a wireframe takes minutes. The same change in a finished site touches templates, content, testing and sometimes the CMS.

The best-known evidence comes from software engineering. In IEEE Computer, Barry Boehm and Victor Basili wrote in 2001 that finding and fixing a software problem after delivery is often 100 times more expensive than finding and fixing it during the requirements and design phase (Boehm and Basili, 2001). They added an honest caveat: for small, noncritical systems, the factor is closer to 5 to 1. Most business websites fall into that second group. Five times the cost is still reason enough to settle the structure first.

Nielsen Norman Group describes how this goes wrong on the web. A team picks a navigation pattern with a top bar and a left-hand column because it looks good. That pattern handles content up to four levels deep. Later, a content inventory shows that many sections go deeper. The team must either redesign the navigation or squeeze the content into four levels. A sitemap and a wireframe prevent exactly that kind of rework.

In practice, a better UX structure gives you:

• less rebuilding, because decisions about pages and journeys are made before development;
• shorter discussions, because a colourless wireframe keeps attention on content;
• fewer late requests, because everyone has already approved the structure;
• a site that can grow, because a clear structure absorbs new pages without breaking the navigation.

This is why we never start with code. Changing your mind is always allowed, but revisiting an approved phase costs extra time and budget, and the later it happens, the more work depends on it.

UX and UI for premium brands

For premium brands, UX is not a technical detail. It is how quality becomes tangible online, or quietly disappears.

First impressions form fast. Gitte Lindgaard and colleagues showed people web pages for 50 milliseconds and found that their judgements of visual appeal were already consistent (Lindgaard et al., 2006). That says nothing about whether the site works. It does say that your UI is the first thing your brand is judged on.

Premium also asks for restraint, and restraint is a UX decision as much as a visual one. Fewer options per screen. Calm typography. One obvious next step. On our design page we call this usable minimalism: the structure, the typography, the pace of the interface, the performance of the technology and the rhythm of the content should all carry the same sense of quality your clients experience offline.

What separates a premium experience in practice:

• One system. The UI follows your brand guide, so every page and component carries the same weight.
• Speed. A slow site feels careless, however refined the design.
• Relevance. The experience can adapt to the visitor. Our guide to website personalisation explains how.

For how premium brands build trust online, read luxury websites, proven to convert.

How to choose a UX design partner in the Netherlands

Choose a UX partner on process and thinking, not on a beautiful portfolio alone. A portfolio shows where other projects ended. The process decides where yours will end.

These questions separate a real UX partner from a screen supplier:

1. How do you start? With research, structure and a sitemap, or straight into screens?
2. Is there a wireframe phase in the proposal? Without one, the structure only becomes visible once the design is finished.
3. Who builds what you design? Handoffs between separate parties are where details get lost.
4. What do I own at the end? Ask about the design files, a brand guide and access to the site.
5. How do feedback and changes work? Ask what a change costs after you have approved a phase.
6. How do you measure after launch? A design is a hypothesis until you see how people use it.

Are cheap UX design services worth it?

Cheap options exist: a freelancer for a defined task, a UX review of your current site, or a template you adapt yourself. They work when the scope is small and you know exactly what you need. They tend to fail when nobody owns the structure, because then the cheapest step becomes the most expensive one to undo.

At Viralistic, web design projects start around EUR 4,000, and larger CMS-driven platforms can reach EUR 20,000 or more. The main driver is whether we design only the homepage and one or two heavy pages in Figma, or every page in detail. For an honest overview of price levels across the market, see how much a website costs.

How we help

At Viralistic, UX and UI belong to one project under one strategic lead. We start with strategy and structure, design in Figma and build in Astro. Our design approach shows how we translate a brand into interfaces and content that stay coherent at scale, and our web design page sets out all six phases, each with its own feedback moment. In a strategic call we tell you honestly whether your brand is ready for design and development, or what needs to happen first.

Frequently asked questions

What exactly does a UX designer do?

A UX designer makes sure a website or app makes sense to the people using it. The work starts with research into what users want and where they get stuck. From there, the UX designer organises content, maps journeys, draws wireframes, builds a prototype and tests it with real people. A UI designer then gives that structure its visual form.

Is UX design a lot of coding?

No. UX designers mostly work on research, structure and prototypes, in tools such as Figma. Understanding how things get built does help, because it keeps designs realistic and avoids surprises during development. At Viralistic the same team designs in Figma and builds in Astro, so design decisions are made with the build in mind from the start.

How much do UI UX design services cost?

It depends on scope more than on hourly rates. Compare what you get per phase: research, sitemap, wireframes, UI design and testing. At Viralistic, UX and UI are part of the web design project. Projects start around EUR 4,000, and larger CMS-driven platforms can reach EUR 20,000 or more, depending mainly on how many pages we design in detail.

How do I choose a UX design consulting firm for an IT project?

Look at the process before the portfolio. Ask how they start, whether wireframes are part of the proposal, who builds what they design and what you own at the end. Ask to see a sitemap or wireframe from a past project, not only finished screens. A firm that cannot explain its structure phase is selling visuals rather than UX.

How many users do you need for usability testing?

Fewer than most people expect. Jakob Nielsen of Nielsen Norman Group found that five users uncover roughly 85 percent of usability problems. He recommends several small rounds instead of one large study, so you can fix issues between rounds. If you have clearly different audiences, test three or four people from each group.

Do I need separate UX and UI designers?

For most websites, no. Large product teams often split the roles, but for a business website one design team that handles both usually works better: fewer handoffs and less noise. What matters more is the order. Start with colour and imagery and you skip the structure. That bill arrives later anyway.