User Friction: What is it and How Can Businesses Deal With it?
A smooth and hindrance-free navigation is the foremost marker of an optimal user experience.?
However, achieving it is no small feat. Why so? The reason lies in User Friction - a formidable barrier that stops the conduction of seamless user engagement and conversion.
In this week’s edition, we will delve into some key details about User Friction and how it manifests. Moreover, we will also see how brands can alter their digital experience to minimize this friction, thereby improving UX.
What is User Friction?
User friction (or UX friction) acts as an obstacle that hinders a user's actions and behaviour within their digital environment.
This phenomenon has a variety of adverse effects including obstruction of purchases, frustrating users, and ultimately, leading to a significant decline in customer satisfaction. But before we understand how to deal with user friction, it is important to learn its different categories:
What Causes User Friction?
Now that we have learned about what UX friction is, the next step is to understand the factors that affect its emergence. The most common factors are as follows:
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How to Restrict User Friction?
The effects of combating user friction are not uni-dimensional. While it improves user experience, by extension, it also drives conversions, boosts customer loyalty and revenue.??
Without further ado, here are some essential strategies to help reduce the effects of user friction:
1. Tools for product analysis are highly effective in restricting user friction. These combined with data on customer behaviour can give businesses adequate insights into how users interact with a particular site. Further, this helps in pinpointing the origin of friction.??
2. One major mistake that many UX designers make is leaving empty state screens. This is not in the best interest of user experience and should be replaced with placeholder data or engaging content.
3. Product tours, walk-throughs, or in-app checklists are nifty ways to keep the users engaged with your products. Further, they reduce cognitive and emotional friction too.
4. Self-help support systems are essential. They allow users to utilize their resources in the best possible way and resolve issues independently.
5. As the digital environment advances, customers expect hyper-personalization when approaching any website or application. As such, to reduce user friction, it is important to tailor UX to individual needs. You can do this by utilizing data to pre-empt possible problem points and eradicating them.
In conclusion, when embarking on the journey to create and market products, reducing user friction becomes imperative. While not all user friction is considered bad, most of them can adversely affect business performance.
Utilize the aforementioned strategies to evaluate your user experience, improving upon the pain points to pave your way to success!
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