When friction in your funnel is a good thing

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Marketers often default to wanting to reduce friction in their funnels as much as possible. We remove steps in our signup process, obsess over add-to-cart and checkout rates, and create lead magnets with big, bold signup buttons to drive as many leads as we can.

But, the goal isn’t really to drive as many leads as we can. It’s to drive as many good, high-intent, high-value leads as we can. Friction should be thought of as your friend, not your enemy, in accomplishing this.

Caveat: If your product is something that could be considered an impulse purchase, then you should absolutely focus on removing any sources of friction. Make it as easy as possible for consumers to take that desired action.

But in virtually all other cases, using strategically-placed friction to build intent and quality will help you activate, not just cultivate, users. Even still, some types friction should be avoided altogether, so let’s dive in to how and when to best use friction to your advantage.

Three types of friction

Not all friction is created equal. While some types of friction can be used strategically, others should be avoided entirely. Here’s how to tell them apart.

Misplaced friction

Misplaced friction should always be avoided. This is friction that prevents your user from taking your desired action, without building intent or quality along the way.

Think about scrolling Instagram and seeing an ad for a chic AND comfortable looking pair of summer sandals — the jackpot. You weren’t browsing for shoes in the moment, but you want to see what these cost and whether the reviews are good. Well, you clicked the ad and got dropped on a collections page of hundreds of shoes. There’s no way you’re going to spend time sifting through this whole mess to find the sandals from the ad and you abandon ship. This is misplaced friction.

Other common examples are broken experiences like dead links or 2FA sign-in where codes never get delivered, or disjointed and unexpected experiences, like unclear and confusing UX, or being prompted to give a credit card number before you know enough about what you’re buying.

You’re probably too close to your site and user experiences to properly audit them for misplaced friction. Instead, have a friend who’s as close to your ICP as possible review your different user journeys, and ask them to note places that something unexpected or frustrating happened in the process.

Positive friction

Positive friction, which encourages users to take the desired action, can be strategically used to your benefit when done right. Positive friction allows you to do a few things:

Build intent through the user journey

When I was leading growth marketing at SmartAsset, a $1B fintech startup that matches people with financial advisors, I saw firsthand how a funnel full of “friction” actually solved for intent and quality.

We dropped users into a long questionnaire that asked them all about their personal finances, net worth, retirement plans, and personal information, like where they were located and their contact info. At the time it was somewhere close to 30 questions, which might sound crazy, but we learned there were two phenomena at play here:

First, the friction we were creating with such a long lead gen flow actually did a great job at weeding out low-intent users that never wanted to work with a financial advisor in the first place.

Second, the sunk cost fallacy was strongly at play, meaning folks that had invested the time to answer all these questions didn’t want to abandon all their progress partway through. Of course, good UX is necessary to avoid any misplaced friction in an experience like this.

Lead the user to your desired action in an optimal way

IKEA is the classic example of using positive friction to nudge users toward a desired action — a big purchase. Stores are designed with friction in mind — a one-way maze across an average 300,000 square feet of furniture, lighting, homewares, and even entire kitchens. But they make it easy and fun, with engaging displays, arrows to point you in the right direction, wide aisles that are easy to maneuver, and exit points if you need.

Of course, this design is very intentionally thought out. By introducing friction that makes your shopping trip more of an exciting journey than a chore, IKEA achieves a larger basket size and more time spent in store from its shoppers.

Take advantage of user expectations at each stage in your journey

Cookie consent banners are a good digital example of using expectations to your advantage. While the first sites to put these up for compliance reasons probably dreaded doing so, consumers are now so used to simply clicking “accept” to get these annoying banners out of the way that there’s no misplaced friction here.

Sure, it’s one extra step, but most users are going to take the one-click, easy way out, rather than customizing their cookie preferences one by one on each site they visit. Of course there’s good intent behind giving consumers control over their data, but by making the desired outcome the easy choice, brands get to maintain the ability to anonymously track their users.

Put this into practice by browsing around on a bunch of different sites, and observe where your expectations of how to get from step to step are met or not. Was a button or login experience placed somewhere you didn’t initially expect? Was it totally seamless to access what you needed to? Each incremental step in a user journey is inherently a friction point, but some are so expected that there's not going to be any drop off.

Preventative friction

Preventative friction discourages an undesirable behavior, and should be used sparingly.

The most ubiquitous example of preventative friction is the experience you encounter when you try to cancel a subscription. Subscribers are often a brand’s most valuable users, because they drive repeatable revenue and a high LTV. A subscriber cancelling their subscription is therefore a highly undesirable behavior. Most brands will take advantage of this, and put a slew of steps in front of you before they actually let you cancel.

The most egregious example of this that still sticks with me to this day is when I tried to cancel a clothing subscription I’d purchased unknowingly, when I was fresh out of college and making virtually no money. I thought I was just buying clothes online, but apparently I’d missed some fine print where I was signing up for a mystery box to be delivered to me each month. A recurring charge like this obviously didn’t fit into my tight budget, so I went to cancel, and ultimately had to take and pass a quiz on this brand’s cancellation policies in order for my cancellation to be processed. Don’t be this brand.

When considering adding preventative friction to your user experience, give it something I like to call the “eye roll test.” Consumers are savvier than ever and can tell when they’re being bamboozled. If your typical user is going to roll their eyes at your preventative friction, or, worst case, get legitimately angry, leave it out. It’s not worth it.

The TL;DR

Friction is not the enemy! 

While misplaced friction that prevents users from achieving desired outcomes should always be avoided, positive friction and preventative friction can be used to your advantage for any product that’s not an impulse purchase. Positive friction can help you build intent and drive a qualified, activated user base, where preventative friction can reduce unwanted behaviors.

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✨ One marketing thing: The latest on the TikTok ban.

✨ One fun thing: The /FindTheSniper subreddit has become one of my favorite internet corners recently.

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