Seamlessness vs. Friction

Whenever we work on a product, we’re faced with a number of issues. An issue that arises on a continuous basis is that our clients and their customers want to checkout in a super fast way. They want to be able to select their products and complete their purchases in less than a minute.

And for a customer, completing a transaction at lightning speed is amazing right? Well yes and no. Seamless journeys have become a basic benchmark in the industry especially where there is a checkout involved.

But, if you focus on making the journey as quick as possible for the end user, you may not be taking into consideration their need state, not to mention opportunities to provide options for increased revenue potential. On the way to the checkout, you might present customers with a pop-up that mentions additional products that they might like, or if you’ve got even a basic recommendation engine at your fingertips then you might recommend products that other people have bought or products they’ve bought before.

You have to strike a key balance in any friction you add, if you add too many additional upsell pages before checkout then you are likely to destroy your conversion and increase dropout, but no friction may mean you are missing out on great opportunities for revenue maximisation.

It can be more serious than this, if a customer wants to apply for credit, aside from legislation, they need to be aware of the contract they are entering, and whether they have an ability to pay back what they are borrowing. A seamless journey in this case, could be simple and effective, but still needs to be met with appropriate elements of friction and review. The ‘are you sure’ moment.

Consumers are more time conscious than ever, the balance can be met in other ways. For example clever features such as remembering card details, or offering a fantastic range of payment methods. Your customer base needs to be understood and rather than just applying industry norms, you need to work out what works for them.

At Lvl-7, we are experts in checkout and conversion. Help us plot what works for you and your customers, increase conversion, maintain retention or grow your business 🚀

Talk to us today!