Hidden Points of Friction Are Killing Your Conversions
Hey, welcome to another issue of The CRO Weekly. In case you’re new here, this is a newsletter where I send out 1 actionable tip for how to improve the conversion rate and increase the average order value of your Ecommerce store. If you’re not into it, you can unsubscribe at any time.
Alright, with that being said let’s get into today’s issue.
You know what friction feels like when buying a product. Friction ranges from minor annoyance to completely infuriating depending on the situation.
Product details text is hard to read? Minor friction. Add to cart button broken? That's a major point of friction!
But that's the easy stuff that anyone with a UX background will pick up in an audit - and it's not what's going to unlock big conversion rate improvements. Don't get me wrong, you should fix all the small UX issues - but we're going to talk about something much harder to diagnose with much more upside – hidden points of friction.
What am I talking about?
I'm talking about friction that is in the mind of your customer. Things that you won't know are there until you either talk to your customers or do your best to put yourself in their shoes.
Hidden points of friction come in two forms:
HF #1) Objections your customers have to your product that you're not addressing in your copy
HF #2) Objections you cause your customers to come up with because your copy is confusing.
Imagine your customer thinking "wow this product just looks like it will be super expensive to ship" (HF #1). If you don't address that in your copy you're adding a ton of friction to the purchase experience. They're thinking.. "I don't want to go through the whole checkout to find out I don't want to pay for the shipping... I'll just go somewhere else."
To illustrate HF #2, let's look at a real world example.
We're going to be looking at Marea's website.
Maria is a drinkable multivitamin to help with PMS and was started by Monica Grohne.
Note: Marea's product is for menstruators – as their copy says – which I'm not. Please excuse any potentially dumb assumptions I make on what I think Marea's target market will see as a point of friction.
Specifically, we're going to talk about Marea's purchase options. That is, the fact they only have an option to subscribe for monthly deliveries.
There's nothing inherently wrong with only letting people subscribe. After all it may be better than making people choose. But remember, we're looking for hidden points of friction so we need to put ourselves in the mind of the customer.
To start, let's assume someone is buying for the first time.
If someone is buying for the first time they’re likely just looking to try it out. This means they need to sign up for the subscription and then cancel afterwards.
I don't know about you.. but this is already giving me anxiety.
I'm thinking about the 3 subscriptions I'm paying for that I simply forgot to cancel. I'm thinking about how hard it is to cancel subscriptions with some companies – do I have to call or send an email or what? Already, there's two potential points of friction:
How hard is it to cancel?
What if I forget but I wanted to cancel?
Marea do a pretty god job of addressing this:
On their home Page:
On their product Page:
The "Cancel Anytime" copy is hard to miss. But, does that address all of my fears?
Remember, I'm worried about how hard it is to cancel and what happens if I forget to cancel. Cancel anytime sounds great - but those annoying companies that made me call them to cancel said I could cancel anytime too.
Marea could address this by adding to their 'subscription details' section and saying "Cancel anytime with one click - no communication necessary!" and "We'll email you a week before your next scheduled delivery to remind you it's on the way."
Second, let's think about the product offering.
Again, I know, I don't know anything about PMS. I'm just making assumptions here so bear with me. But, the first thing that comes to mind with a subscription is - why do I need 30 servings delivered to me every month. If this is a 'PMS elixer' - that's only like a week or so every month. So shouldn't 30 servings last me at least a couple months?
This confusion comes from thinking of how you compare to every other product on the market. Whenever I hear of relieving symptoms my mind is thinking instant-relief, not a preventative product.
If that’s the case, Marea’s customers may be comparing this to an instant-relief product like Advil.
As far as clarifying how the product is used, there’s only two pieces of copy on the site:
On the home page:
On the product page:
Combine this lack of clarity with only giving people the option to subscribe and your potential customer is confused instead of excited to buy.
This is not the time to guess.
Examples are fun but I did not speak with any of Marea’s customers to come up with them. So, are these points of friction real? Maybe. Maybe not. I’d go with probably not.
That’s the reason I called them ‘hidden’ - they’re in the mind of your customer. The only true way to find them is by talking to your customers directly.
Offer a customer something in return for a 20 minute phone call and ask them different variations of this question:
What, if anything, was a reason you considered not buying our product?
All it takes is a phone call and you may find that point of friction that, once eliminated, unlocks major improvements in your conversion rate.
That’s all, folks
Alright, that’s it for issue number 2. Apologies if this was a bit long and ramble-y. Still working on becoming a better writer so bear with me!
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