Anything on your site that slows down, confuses, or stops a customer from completing a purchase.
Friction isn't always obvious — it's the tiny hesitations, the extra clicks, the moment someone thinks "wait, what?" and bounces.
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In ecommerce, friction is the enemy of conversion. It's the reason someone adds to cart but doesn't check out. The reason they close the tab instead of clicking "buy now." The reason your traffic looks great but your revenue doesn't.
Friction can be:
- Cognitive — unclear product info, confusing navigation, too many choices, bad copywriting
- Interaction-based — slow load times, broken buttons, forms that don't work on mobile, too many required fields at checkout
- Emotional — lack of trust signals, sketchy return policy, no social proof, aggressive pop-ups
The tricky thing about friction is that it's subjective. What feels seamless to you (the person who built the site) might feel clunky to a first-time visitor. You know where everything is. They don't.
Reducing friction doesn't mean stripping your site down to nothing. It means making every step feel easy and obvious. It means anticipating questions before they arise. It means designing for clarity, not cleverness.
Examples / tips:
- Common friction points: no size guide on apparel, unclear shipping costs, requiring account creation to check out, mobile site that's hard to tap/scroll.
- Test your own checkout flow on your phone. If anything feels annoying, fix it.
- Use microcopy to reduce friction — a simple "Free returns within 30 days" next to the ATC button can eliminate a major objection.
- Remove unnecessary form fields. Every extra field you ask for is friction.
- If your bounce rate is high on product pages, friction is usually the culprit — not enough info, too much info, or the wrong info in the wrong order.
