Why 94% of E-Commerce Sites Are Failing: Jane Austin on Design, AI and Accessibility

Jane Austin on the accessibility crisis, design ROI, and why the most powerful AI is invisible.

Jane Austin has a problem with how the design industry talks about itself. As VP of Design at Contentsquare, the analytics platform used by marketers and designers to improve customer experiences, she’s spent years watching the same debate resurface: does design actually have ROI?

“I think sometimes we have this perception of creativity as somebody starving in an attic, writing a novel, that it somehow should be unsullied by commerce,“ Austin tells me. “But actually, design is a business driver. It’s not a fluffy thing you do at the end.“

Her career backs this up. She’s joined companies at inflection points – IG during its rebrand and shift to agile, the Government Digital Service during its transformation of government services, and Babylon Health during its international expansion. At each, she’s had to prove design’s business value.

AI: Taking Away the Drudgery, Not the Joy

On AI’s impact on customer experience, Austin sees brands getting it wrong from a business perspective. While mu…