They are not necessarily always aligned either and you may have to choose at one point. UX is very subjective and taking a dogmatic approach to it and how it affects your business isn't a very good idea.
I would also say that having a poor User Interface and poor User Experience is doubly bad for business.
I'm reminded of the recent article posted here to HN about Expedia removing a single field from their checkout form that resulted in $12MM to the bottom line.
Better UI + Better UX = Better Business
Would you like fries with that?
Article continues on page C8.
The DX is a fine automobile, sir, but the LX offers a lot of extra safety features, which I'm sure mean a lot to you with such a charming wife. (Are you newlyweds, ma'am?) Traction control, ankle air bags, anti-impact rustproofing, everything a lucky man like you needs to safeguard his precious cargo. And the premium for these features is really not much compared to what you have to lose.
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The product is configured using a bespoke business process description language that describes your configuration in intuitive problem-domain terms. It's so simple and intuitive, a non-technical person can understand this fake example! The support contract specifies that our consultants will be available at reasonable rates to attempt to train your business analysts to be programmers, and then to attempt to train your IT staff to write code in what turns out to be an arcane '80s-era language with dozens of undocumented bugs and sharp edges, and then to do all the work themselves at great cost since nobody can actually be trained to configure the product in any reasonable amount of time.
When I have to watch that very same 30 second Hoodie Footie Pajamagram - the perfect way to snuggle up - segment before each and every 3m news video on CNBC it's a torture for my brain.
I wish more sites gave me a reasonable way to buy myself freedom from that "highly relevant" bloat.
[Edit] As a service provider, I appreciate the convenient excuse you provide for torturing my users ;-)
you are right, however, if the people you are generalizing for are HN folks, and websites other than Google.
Of course, not all non-clickers would be terribly annoyed, but many of the clickers might still be annoyed by the distraction even though the ad was relevant enough to click on.
You'd do better to ask which situations it is good for business,and which situations focusing on a strong UX can distract from more pressing concerns, or worse.
The article mentions one potential situation of the later type and I strongly suspect that large e-commerce firms do know what they are doing for the most part. The Expedia example you cite clearly shows that they do, in fact, experiment with their UX. (It doesn't clearly show that there is a correlation with removing fields and clutter and increasing profits, we'd need a lot more datapoints than that.)
CWuestefeld, mentions another, where they have to cater to two very different kinds of customers with different needs and usage patterns. There is no single UX that would satisfy both and I suspect that it would be prohibitively expensive to target them separately, hence business, in this situations trumps UX.
Clearly this isn't always the case and everything being equal, good UX will probably trump bad UX, but everything rarely is equal, and that's the problem.
I can't say I agree with this. Maybe you're thinking of UI, which I would agree can be very subjective.
Great UX, on the other hand, in the most simple possible terms, is the application of the golden rule to any interactive system: software, gadget, subway system, what have you. "If I had to use this thing, how would I want it to work?"
As a result, it's a pretty simple thing to test: how does this implementation enhance or detract from the user's ability to do what they're trying to do?
The degree of impact may be subjective, but I think it's pretty easy to tell when something is user hostile or user friendly.
In the real world, where people have at least slightly different goals, are more or less sophisticated, and sometimes use IE6, compromises -- sometimes deep ones -- must be made.
For example, on our ecommerce site, we've got at least two very different user personas. One is what you might think is typical -- an end-user who browses, trying to figure out what to buy. The other is a purchasing manager, simply working his way down a purchase order. In many parts of the process these two people have very different needs. Obviously we want to try to cater to both of them, but multiplying the options in itself has effect on the UX.
If you're capitalistic about things though sometimes you want to do what will hinder your user's ability to fulfill their goal.
For example at the supermarket - I want to get milk and get away quick but the supermarket wants me to go through the whole store and be confronted with offers and the smell of the instore bakery, etc.. My experience is frustrated on purpose to benefit the business financially.
Similarly with "checkout" offers on a sales website. One particular printer makes you manually leaf through about 12 pages of offers after you've confirmed your purchase - it's a poorer UX (IMO) but will benefit the business.
Others will argue, this last case say, is an improved UX as I get the chance to bag offers I perhaps hadn't noticed. Thus it's subjective.