Design
What is UX design?
UX design is the practice of shaping how a product works from the user's side, so that completing a task is clear, quick, and worth doing.
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Technical definition
UX design covers research, information structure, flow design, and testing. It decides what steps exist, in what order, and what happens when something goes wrong. UI design covers the visible layer: type, color, spacing, and the controls themselves.
The two overlap in practice but answer different questions. UX asks whether a person can complete the task. UI asks whether the screen they do it on is legible and coherent. A beautiful interface over a broken flow is a UI success and a UX failure.
In plain terms
UX is whether the thing works for the person using it. UI is what it looks like while they do.
A checkout with a gorgeous button that asks for the same address twice has good UI and bad UX.
Why it matters
On a small business site, UX comes down to a handful of concrete questions. How many steps to book an appointment. Whether a price is findable without a phone call. Whether the form says what went wrong when it rejects an entry. None of those are visual decisions.
The cheapest UX work available is watching one real person use your site without helping them. Give them a task, say nothing, and note where they pause. Five minutes of that finds more than an afternoon of opinion, because the thing that confuses people is never the thing the person who built it expects.
