Friction

In physics, friction is resistance that slows movement. Online, friction is any point in an experience where a user might hesitate, get confused, or entirely give up. The cause of friction is anything that slows a user down, creates confusion, or makes them work harder then they should to complete a task. In regards to UX, friction is often mentioned as something to avoid at all costs; the cause of poor conversions, low retention, and other issues.

As a reminder, your proximity to your own website and business makes it harder for you to identify friction yourself. Your customers may experience friction at points that seem completely intuitive to you—it’s important to keep that in mind when evaluating your website or a user flow for friction points.

Is friction always bad?

No—despite the overwhelming emphasis on reducing clicks and removing friction, friction is not always a bad thing—only unintentional friction is.

Unintentional friction

Unintentional friction is any pain point or complexity that is negatively impacting your user’s experience. These friction points are slowing down users in ways that they don’t want or need to be impeded—and will likely impact your conversions and user retention.

We cause this friction “unintentional” because its rare that you would have made decisions that would knowingly harm your user’s experience.

Intentional friction

There are not-uncommon scenarios in which friction is actually necessary for a good user experience. There are obvious examples like requiring a confirmation before completing a purchase, deleting information, or performing any other “critical” or “destructive” action.

Adding intentional friction points—or “speed bumps”— is a valuable tool whenever you have a point where it’s in the user’s best interest to slow down. If you notice trends in customers providing incorrect information, or experessing confusion related to the details of a product or service post-purchase, it may be indicitive that your experience is actually too efficent; users are missing or misunderstanding the process. Exploring intentional friction can be a strategic tool to focus your users onto an important piece of information, re-enforce intent, or prevent mistakes.

The compounding impact of friction

Bugs happen and integrations have constraints—it’s unlikely that without an unlimited budget you’ll ever have a 100% friction-free site. Even then, all technology comes with some form of limitation and those limitations can create friction points out of your control.

What you shouldn’t do is panic over these unavoidable friction points. A single friction point is tolerable, and users will push through it. However even if instances of friction are individual and isolated, their impact is not.

The impact of multiple friction points stack; each new point of friction increases a users frustration and their risk of abandonment. Once a user hits their threshold the friction will no longer be worth pushing through, and they’ll leave the experience—this is the point at which you want to prevent users from ever having to reach.

This impact of compounding friction is why conversion problems are rarely caused by one single big issue. Rather, they are the result of many small ones.

Take the following scenarios: you visit a restaurant where you’re presented with a confusing menu, your dish comes out wrong, and the bill has a charge for something you never ordered—individually these issues could all be forgivable mistakes, but together they might make you unlikely to return.

Common sources of friction

The following items are some of the most common issues we spot on websites, and can be used as easy points to begin making improvements to reduce friction:

• Presenting too many choices at one time without providing clear direction.
• Vague or missing call-to-actions that leave your user uncertain about where they should proceed.
• Long or unnecessary form fields that collect infomration you don’t yet need.
• Slow load times—even milliseconds can cause users to leave and cost valuable conversions.
• Requiring an account before allowing a customer to make any purchase or inquiries.
• Broken links, outdated information, or flows that result in a dead-end with no path to continue.
• Navigation that doesn’t match what users expect.

Surprising examples of friction

Some examples of friction are pretty obvious, if something doesn’t work it’s obviously going to be annoying. Here are some more examples of items that seem harmless, but can actually be causing problems for your users.

• Auto-playing audio or video: This can be jarring and disorienting for unsuspecting users—plus it’s an accessibility concern. While auto-playing video on mute or without any audio at all is a bit better, there are still accessibility concerns for individuals with motion sensitivities. If you choose to auto-play any moving content, it’s important to have an easily accessible pause button.
• Popups that appear too quickly or too frequently: While it’s not uncommon to for sites to load a promotional popup when a visitor first comes to the website, we’ve started to notice more and more sites bringing it up on every new page load. While we’re not sure if this is being caused by an issue with cookies or an intentional marketing choice, it’s incredibly frustrating and disruptive to have to decline the same message on each new page.
• Forms that don’t confirm submission: If your form doesn’t have a really clear confirmation your users have no way of knowing if their submission went through. This lack of confidence can damage trust and credibility—not to mention result in users sending multiple submissions that you’ll have to deal with on the backend.
• Unlinked phone numbers and emails: ****Phone numbers and emails should be displayed as clickable links whenever possible, not just listed in plain text. Failing to do so can be especially frustrating on mobile devices where it is impossible to view both the contact information and the relative app it needs to be entered into.

Identifying friction

1. Walk through your site as a customer would and complete a specific task. Time yourself from start to finish; does the time it took seem appropriate to the task’s level of complexity? Remember, you’re familiar with your website and business—assume real customers will always take longer to complete the same sequence of actions.
2. Ask someone unfamiliar with your business or website to complete a task. Observe their actions and ask them to narrate their thoughts out loud. Make notes of any issues they run into.
3. Look at your website analytics. Make a note of any pages with high exit rates. While not guaranteed, this can be an indicator that there is friction at these points and help you focus your efforts.