We live in an age of convenience and impatience. Technology and fast internet has turned marketing into a whole different ball game. Infinite choices has made us overly critical of what we have to deal with, and any friction can scare prospects away…
First, let’s define “friction”:
Friction is the actions required by any visitor to your website to engage with you – whether it is reaching out to you, or buying something from you. It also includes anything else that could slow them down or make them lose interest.
Having friction is unavoidable. Having unnecessary friction WILL cost you money.
Why?
Because your competitors will figure out how to do business with less friction, and be ahead of you.
Examples of unnecessary friction for your website visitors:
1. Too many form fields on a contact form.
This one is complicated. Zero friction is not always the ideal way to go. You need to strike a balance between qualifying your prospect and making it easy. In some industries, making it too easy could result in too many tire kickers or even spammers.
In most industries, however, minimizing friction means that more people will contact you.
2. A slow loading website.
Once upon a time, we were able to blame slow loading websites on a poor internet connection. There was a time when you could literally go and fix yourself a cup of coffee while waiting for a website to load. The era of dial-up connections.
Today we have connection speeds that are literally thousands of times faster than that. Not to mention we have hosting providers that use content delivery networks to speed up complex websites to open in a flash.
As these evolved, so did humanity’s expectations. And the tolerated level of friction diminished. Google suggests you aim for 1.5 seconds or less. Their statistics show that 47% of people expect a website to fully load within two seconds. And 40% will definitely leave if it takes more than 3 seconds to load.
3. Clutter.
We have seen it so many times… many small business owners literally want to “show everything” on their home page. Depending on the type of business you run, that could be overwhelming for the first time visitor.
It has been proven – over and over again – that the more choices you give someone, the higher the probability of them simply not choosing anything.
Additionally, the more people have to dig around to find what they need, the higher the probability that they may leave without finding it.
Your home page should contain just enough information to show people that you are in fact able to help them – and from there they should be able to reach whatever else they need to get to, in (ideally) one or two clicks.
4. An illogical layout.
More and more web designers try to “think outside the box”. They try to create something that is unique and different, and which will stand out.
But not everything that stands out is actually useful.
If your website visitor cannot immediately see that basic item they are looking for, they will probably leave. So don’t make them search for a link to your contact page.
Also keep in mind that a sense of familiarity makes it easier for them to trust you – and a simple, logical layout adds to that. Put everything there your website visitor expects to find it – not where your artistic designer wants to hide it.
5. Information overload.
Fair enough, in some industries there is just a lot of information that needs to be provided. However, if too much of that is in one place, it will be overwhelming.
Find a way to classify the information – a way which will make sense to your website visitors, regardless of their level of awareness. On the home page, try to break it down into three main categories or sections, and from there lead them to where they can find the information they need, or a direct link to it.
The more information they have to scroll through before getting to what they need, the higher the probability of then giving up and leaving.
6. Having a wall of text.
Yes, in some industries it is not possible to add loads of graphics or photos. But the reality is that, especially for people on phones, having loads of text becomes hard to read after a while.
If you cannot break it up with pictures, at least try to add some headings in between, and consider making those headings in a different color.
7. Having text areas that are too wide on desktop.
It has been proven that the wider a line of text is, the more difficult it becomes to read. We have seen many websites which were designed solely for mobile use, which were very difficult to read on desktop because of the full width layout.
When you combine long lines with lots of text, it becomes a chore to read. Friction.
8. Requiring too many clicks to find what they need.
Fair enough, there are – again – some industries which require lots of information to be added to a knowledge base. However, in such cases, instead of having endless pages, each with 10 excerpts from knowledge base articles, rather have a page with a table of contents linking to the information needed.
Few things are more frustrating than having to click endlessly to get to the information you need. And that is even worse when the company has a bot sending canned responses to email inquiries.
Many, many serious website visitors have been lost this way (not finding information, and not getting real help via email either).
Where possible, put as much related information as possible on one page, and to in-page links to specific topics in your table of contents. Aside from reducing the amount of friction for your visitors, Google will also see it as a high value page, and place it higher in the search engine rankings.
9. No clear calls to action.
It might seem simple, but calls to action shows the website visitor what they should do next. If you have a lot of information on any given page, without a clear call to action at the end (or after every section where it makes sense), some of your website visitors are likely to find it confusing. And they will give up and leave.