Hey everyone, this is Patricio from Looptimize and in this post I’d like to talk a bit about friction, an important topic in Looptimize’s processes. In physics, friction is the resistance all materials possess when you slide them against each other. Today, however, we want to look at friction in user interfaces, through the point of view of a website visitor.
In this context, friction is what happens when a visitor finds themself facing a problem on your website. The definition we have for friction at Looptimize is “any barrier that results in unnecessary effort in an interaction”. To think about it in general terms, friction can be interpreted as elements, menus, items, icons, messages and aspects of your website that affect a visitor negatively, making him or her work harder than they ideally should have to.
One of the most recognizable friction barriers comes from readability. If your visitor is unable to read the content you're presenting (be it an offer, a menu or a simple button), they will be unable to understand what that content says and why it is there. That transforms into frustration. Make sure your website has fonts that are big enough (at least around 16px for body text for example) and most importantly, that the fonts establish strong contrast against the background (e.g. avoid light gray fonts on a white background).
Now imagine there’s one more common friction barrier affecting the visitor’s experience: the website is slow to respond. The visitor is facing yet another friction point that adds even more to the frustration they were already feeling. This person, the very one that came in looking for a specific product, service or offer, is now on their way out because their journey with your brand wasn’t smooth enough.
The lesson here is that friction stops customer momentum. According to Google Analytics' data on average session duration, you only have about 2-3 minutes of your visitor's attention before they leave your website. This reflects on your brand, product and conversions: what could've been a conversion, when mixed with friction, turns into lost opportunities and visitors feeling disappointed.
To make it easier to counter, we categorize friction under three different types at Looptimize: usability, cognitive and emotional. Usability friction refers to aspects of the website’s UI that keep visitors from completing tasks. It can usually be seen with naked eyes. Cognitive friction covers everything that is confusing or stresses the visitor’s brains too much. Finally, Emotional friction is everything that’s not relevant enough to our visitors at that point in time, or anything that removes credibility from the website. We will talk more in-depth about each of these types in another post.
Fortunately, there are very good solutions for friction. Looptimize is an expert at removing it from all sorts of websites, apps and platforms. How are you thinking about friction in your business right now?