UX and brand strategist. Author of The First Domino.
Every relationship with a brand is decided in the first ninety seconds.
Good user experience is a growth strategy.
Every step a customer takes off your site — a third‑party portal, a PDF, an email chase — is a place to lose them. Lose the sign‑up and you lose the relationship. Lose the follow‑up and you lose the story they would have told about you. The results you report are downstream of the experience you gave someone on day one.
Fix the first domino and the rest fall in order.
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Someone finds you at the moment they need what you do. What happens next is the whole relationship in miniature. If sign‑up is slow, cold, or sends them somewhere that doesn't look like you, most of them leave. If it's fast, warm, and greets them by name, they've learned the opposite.
So the front door is where brand and UX stop being separate departments. Sign‑up takes minutes, lives on your own site, looks like you, and creates exactly one record that everything else attaches to for the life of the customer.
Three rules I don't bend: one record per customer. Their data never reaches a model they didn't agree to. A human owns every decision.
Aaron Phelps. UX and brand strategist, fifteen years in digital strategy. Currently Marketing & Technology Director at NorCal SBDC. Redding, California.
The first domino
Brand is what they feel. UX is what they do.
The first ninety seconds is where the two meet.
Tip the first one well and the rest fall in order.
Case studyRun once, in full, for a network of eighteen small‑business centers. One front door.
Incomplete applications
Form to first appointment
Staff time per attribution
Per customer, ever
A method you can't read isn't a method — it's a sales pitch. Everything here is open.
Explore the notes ↗Notes on UX, psychology, and designing for attention.The field guide · Early 2027
More signal. A clearer next step.
As AI makes it easier to create more, great UX helps people find what matters and act with confidence. A field guide to clarity, trust, and distinctive experiences in an age of noise and sameness.
