In Episode 42, Frustrated by Friction – Why Your Website is Killing Your Business, Bill Scully and Bill Hunt explore the hidden obstacles that prevent users from completing tasks online.
They break down what digital friction actually is, where it commonly appears—from navigation and performance to forms and checkout—and how to identify it using real behavioral signals like bounce rates and rage clicks.
The episode also offers practical ways to reduce friction, simplify user journeys, and create smoother experiences that lead to better engagement and higher conversions
Key Takeaways
- The 90% Rule: Nearly 9 out of 10 consumers won’t return after a bad experience, meaning one friction point can kill long-term loyalty.
- The 3-Second Threshold: Speed is a non-negotiable; over half of mobile users will abandon your site if it takes longer than three seconds to load.
- Identify “Rage” Triggers: Watch out for specific “deal-breakers” like autoplay videos, broken back buttons, and the nightmare of retyping long forms.
- Watch for Behavioral Signals: Look beyond basic bounce rates for “Rage Clicks” and “U-Turns” to pinpoint exactly where users are getting stuck.
- Reduce Cognitive Load: Streamline your UI by using smart defaults, autofill, and one-click solutions to minimize the effort required to finish a task.
- Intentional vs. Accidental Friction: Evaluate if your friction is a helpful guardrail to prevent mistakes or an accidental barrier that’s driving customers away.
Listen now on your favorite platform:
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFXrzglGxTI
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5HwtrWlc7duES4Qi2Zedob?si=J61YDE_oSlGv8Ats7J0WGw
Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/frustrated-by-friction-why-your-website-is-killing/id1755789311?i=1000757756048
Show Note Links
Statsig’s article on digital friction
Transcript
Bill Scully (00:02.542)
Welcome to episode 42 of the International Web Effectiveness Podcast. I’m Bill Scully, joined as always by Bill Hunt. We’re here to help you improve your web presence and manage global websites more effectively.
Today, we’re talking about why your website might be killing your business. Before we get into it, please subscribe so you never miss an episode.
If you’re enjoying the show, tell someone and leave us a quick review. Reviews help us keep going and help new listeners find us.
In our last episode, episode 41, hreflang in the AI era, we discussed why correctly implemented hreflang tags can still result in the wrong country pages appearing in AI search. If you’re dealing with that issue, it’s worth going back and giving that episode a listen.
So Bill, we’ve been talking about some of our recent frustrations. The more I think about it, the more frustrating it gets.
These are small things—simple to fix or even check—but they end up getting in the way of completing tasks. It’s driving me crazy.
Why don’t you share your latest anecdote? We were just talking about this yesterday over lunch.
Bill Hunt (01:34.176)
Yeah, it’s very similar. Mine was almost identical to what you were describing—this idea of friction.
Friction is anything that prevents someone from completing a task. In our case, we were both trying to use miles or points to book a flight.
For me, I went to the airline’s website knowing exactly which flight I wanted. I was looking for the option to book using miles since I’m pretty loyal to United—though this wasn’t United in this case.
But there was no option on the booking form to pay with miles. I started wondering, “Where is this?”
So I went to their mileage program page. Everything there focused on history, how to earn miles, and how many miles I had. But there was nothing about how to redeem them.
I looked everywhere. There wasn’t even a small button or link. Nowhere on that page did it explain how to actually use the miles.
Similar to what you experienced, I had to go through the entire booking process—select the flight, pick seats, add everything to the cart—before finally seeing an option to choose how to pay.
At that point, I didn’t even know if I had enough miles. That’s what I wanted to check upfront.
It was incredibly frustrating. And it raises an important question, which we’ll get into—there are different types of friction.
One type is intentional friction. Were they deliberately making it harder to redeem miles?
Another is accidental friction, where something just gets overlooked.
And a third type I was thinking about this morning is friction caused by incompetence. Did no one—a UX person, product manager, marketer, or salesperson—stop and ask, “Shouldn’t we make it easy for users to do this?”
Or at the very least, allow them to use this currency to purchase from us?
Then there’s that middle ground, where something simply gets left out. We’ve both seen this happen many times over the years.
We sit in meetings as the search expert, watching a site presentation from an agency that was paid a huge amount to build it.
And we know exactly how the company makes money—but that mechanism isn’t even represented on the site.
That’s that middle bucket. A failure to include something critical.
And I think your experience was similar—where the option existed, but it was so small or hidden that it was almost impossible to notice.
Bill Scully (04:53.035)
Yeah, this is a great example of something that’s fundamentally broken—buying airline tickets. I can’t think of another activity where I spend more time and waste more time than booking a flight.
Maybe it’s just me, but I hate spending money on travel. I always want to make sure I’m getting the best option.
I was trying to book a trip to Knoxville, and the ticket prices were insane. So I thought, “Okay, I’ll use some American Airlines points.”
I went to the site, and without going through every detail, there were buttons that said “redeem your miles.” I clicked one, and it took me to the flight search form.
I filled everything out, but the only option was to pay with money.
So I went back and started over. I landed on the same page, looked more closely, and noticed another button with the same label. I clicked it, and it just reloaded the page again.
At that point, I’m thinking, “Is the price going to go up because I just spent 30 minutes redoing all of this?”
Then I realized that at the very start of the process, there’s a tiny checkbox to use miles.
Once you go through that flow, it requires a ridiculous number of miles anyway. It’s just a terrible experience.
There’s a real opportunity here for a brand to make this easier. Especially now with AI, I should be able to say: I want a morning flight out, a morning flight back, the cheapest option, one connection, and no more than a two-hour layover.
That should take seconds—not 20 minutes.
Bill Hunt (07:14.302)
And this goes back to the question—are they doing this on purpose?
Because as we discussed, airlines don’t make money when you redeem miles. They make money when you buy tickets or through their credit card partnerships.
When you redeem miles, they’re essentially losing revenue because that’s a seat they could have sold. They’ve already made money on those miles.
So while we’d like to think this is just a mistake, the fact that the option is hidden behind a tiny checkbox suggests it might be intentional.
If that’s the case, and they’ve accepted a certain level of user frustration as a trade-off, then fine—but that should be a conscious decision backed by data.
Hopefully, someone has modeled that impact.
Bill Scully (08:08.333)
But think about it—this is supposed to be a loyalty program.
All it does is make me less loyal. I have these miles, I want to use them, and I can’t.
It’s incredibly frustrating. Just make it a good experience.
Bill Hunt (08:22.75)
Right. And when you zoom out, how many of these experiences exist?
I actually wrote a blog post about this when we first started discussing the topic. It came from a different example.
My sprinkler company contacted me about winterization. They sent an email saying, “Here’s your scheduled date—click here to accept it or call us to reschedule.”
That part made sense. They need to manage scheduling, so I understood why calling might be necessary.
But personally, I don’t like talking on the phone. I prefer doing things digitally.
Then I got another email saying the appointment was confirmed, but I needed to prepay. So I went to their website.
This is where another common issue comes up—the difference between how customers think about actions versus how companies label them.
For example, banks “loan” money, but customers “borrow” money.
On this site, the link said “Billing.” I’m thinking, “Where do I pay my bill?” Not “billing.”
I clicked it, and it opened a form that honestly felt like something built in 1998.
Then it asked me to enter the amount to pay. But I didn’t know the amount—they never told me.
And I don’t really care about the exact price since the service is required. But how does that amount even tie back to my account?
Why not provide an invoice number? Or at least a dropdown with my service?
I ended up listing all these issues and sent them to the company—not as an accusation, but as feedback.
Bill Scully (10:28.844)
Yeah.
Bill Hunt (10:49.088)
I have no ill will against the company itself, other than the fact that they paid someone—an organization—to build and manage the system who should have known better.
What I ask is: did anyone in the company act like a customer? Did they actually get an email that tells them to prepay for a service?
Because their automation eliminated the old process. They used to send an invoice, and then you could pay by credit card or mail a check. Now, the automation just replaced that process—but it created a mess.
All I’m saying is, if you’re introducing something new, have someone actually go through the process. Check for friction.
The challenge is, the internal person testing it may be the same person who created the system. To them, it’s a logical flow.
So bring in someone else—pull in a warehouse employee, a customer, even a family member. Remember the “grandma test”? The fastest way to find bugs is to ask someone who’s not familiar with your system.
Your kids might be good with digital things, but don’t ask them—ask your parents or someone outside your organization. That perspective will uncover so many potential issues.
Bill Scully (12:17.655)
Yeah, yeah. Your parents… that makes sense.
Bill Scully (12:35.297)
I’ve done this twice with new clients. The first thing I do is crawl their site and find every form I can. Then I test them all.
For one client, the contact form didn’t work at all. Nobody knew where submissions were going, and they weren’t receiving leads. It was an easy fix.
The other client was less obvious. I filled out a form in the morning and expected a response. I emailed them, asking who gets this form.
The next day, I got a reply: “Hey Bill, I just got this.” I said, “You just got this? I sent it yesterday.”
Apparently, the submission went through a spam check overnight, and the system only delivered it the next day. A 24-hour delay for a contact form.
We know that response time is critical. If you don’t respond within the hour, your closure rate drops dramatically.
Bill Hunt (13:44.724)
Wow.
Bill Scully (14:03.211)
Exactly. Your rate of closure really drops.
Bill Hunt (14:07.712)
And this is something that’s relatively easy to automate on both sides.
You can write a simple test: fill out your form, submit it, and check the response time.
There are commercial tools for this. You could even build a skill in Claude or an auto agent in your email client to do it.
Basically, you have the agent fill out the form, submit it, and track when the response arrives. Measure the duration.
It’s just like using an uptime monitor for your website.
It’s amazing how many organizations don’t even know these basic things.
Bill Scully (15:01.25)
Yeah.
Bill Hunt (15:03.966)
One thing I track is the frequency of updating plugins. If someone’s on a WordPress site, plugins update constantly, and you never know when one might break something or degrade performance.
I have uptime monitors on every site I work with or own. It’s interesting how often they flag an issue. Sometimes it’s just five minutes of downtime, sometimes longer, but at least I know the site is down.
Then you go check, and you might see a warning from WordPress or Cloudflare. Cloudflare alone is a whole other topic. Their warning message—“you’re not able to access this site”—comes up a lot when we crawl sites.
Bill Scully (15:48.129)
Heh.
Bill Hunt (16:01.441)
Yeah. Cloudflare often flags our IP as rogue, especially at conferences where tons of search people are crawling simultaneously. That IP block gets flagged as aggressive.
The error message usually tells you to contact the webmaster or security manager and reference some 400-character error code. But nobody really understands what it means.
I recently saw a grocery site flag me as a rogue bot. It required dragging a slider to the right to prove I was human—no instructions, nothing clear.
Bill Scully (16:32.129)
Yeah.
Bill Hunt (16:57.707)
Exactly. These tools mean well, but no one thinks through the user experience. Can the warning statement be made clearer?
I had another case that was completely new to me. I was trying to look at a page, and Chrome DevTools sent a different signal. Their warning said, “You might be using DevTools to view this page. That’s not allowed.”
I thought, “Wow, I’ve never seen that before.” I exited DevTools, tried again, and after a second page, it presented the slider authentication to prove I was human.
All of these systems are amazing when implemented correctly. The problem is usually with the people who implement them—not thinking through real-world scenarios.
Bill Scully (17:59.064)
Right.
Bill Hunt (18:18.995)
Exactly. We don’t often test these systems like a real user would. Now, with AI being used more, people click links generated by AI. Some sites actually block users because the source references ChatGPT.
The site thinks it’s protecting itself, but it’s punishing the user instead.
Another common issue is ignoring user feedback. For example, the same airline I tried to upgrade told me to send an email with my booking number.
I did, and the response said, “This booking doesn’t look like it was from us. We can only upgrade you on our airline.”
I couldn’t respond because the system blocked replies from that thread. I had to submit another request—and it took four attempts to complete the process.
These kinds of feedback failures are common. Your example earlier about forms highlights the same issue.
So from your experience, what other issues do you see on the marketing, lead generation, and revenue side? How are these things impacting revenue?
Bill Scully (20:16.076)
Yeah.
Bill Scully (20:24.075)
Well, I think all frustration ultimately leads to a loss of revenue. But there are some obvious examples, like poor navigation and weak visual hierarchy.
One thing I like to do with clients is map out customer journeys. We write very specific scenarios and then hand them off to someone completely unfamiliar with the system—like a secretary or a family member.
You’d be amazed at the feedback you get from just that simple exercise. People often don’t understand navigational terms. They think they’re going one place but end up somewhere else.
There are misleading links or buttons. One thing that really bugs me is when a link says “view” but triggers a download. I never read downloads when I’m actively looking for information—I’ll save something for reference, but not in the moment.
Bill Hunt (21:33.985)
Especially on your phone. Then you have to go find the damn file.
Bill Scully (21:42.196)
Exactly. Everyone listening should try to complete a task on their phone. You’ll be amazed at bad UX—images locked off the page, forms placed incorrectly, just crazy stuff. Most sites have never been reviewed on mobile.
Autoplay videos are another example—annoying and distracting. Then there are broken links or buttons, sometimes hidden in JavaScript, that aren’t picked up in crawls.
And almost every site I visit tries to make me sign up for a newsletter within two seconds. Why would I do that? I don’t need another newsletter—yet the pop-up appears immediately.
Bill Hunt (23:03.039)
And then there’s a multitude of other pop-ups—today’s deal, special offers, and so on.
Bill Scully (23:05.985)
Yeah, yeah. And now you have GDPR forms too. Some of these don’t even let you opt out. At this point, I just choose the path of least resistance.
Bill Hunt (23:39.01)
Same here. I’ll back out. I don’t need their information that badly.
Google can act as the “content police.” Poor UX can get you deselected from search results entirely.
Bill Scully (24:07.563)
Right—it’s all about engagement.
Bill Hunt (24:07.617)
Exactly. Think about slow pages—like restaurants with menus or PDFs. Google knows when users are on mobile and can identify painful experiences.
If one bagel shop is difficult to use on mobile and another nearby is smooth, Google may prioritize the easier experience. You might rank well on desktop, but not on mobile.
Factors like pop-ups, slow loading, or difficult navigation can all cause a site to be skipped in results.
Bill Scully (25:21.087)
And AI won’t even ingest it properly—it will just skip past it.
Bill Hunt (25:24.075)
Definitely not. We’re already seeing this happen. I’m actually writing a point of view on single-page applications. From an SEO perspective, one problem is that links from the homepage are basically invisible.
They’re often not standard <a href> links. Instead, they’re objects that trigger a lookup table to find the destination. So Google or Bing can’t see the link value transferring from the homepage.
Rewriting this for AI, it’s even worse. AI isn’t going to spend time loading JavaScript, rendering paths, or figuring out these navigation tricks. They’ll skip past it entirely.
Everyone wants to rank in AI results, so we need to make this painless. Just spend time testing on mobile, tablet, and desktop—but especially on mobile.
I was invited to a call for a massive website rebuild. The company had created what developers call “site maps”—really just the taxonomy of the site. I asked a simple question: did anyone review analytics to see the top five paths from the homepage? Or the top five paths from the product listing page?
Bill Hunt (27:46.348)
Did anyone actually look at real user paths, or did they just throw features into a tool? It turned out that someone said, “I need a website built this way, with these features and functions,” and then built the sitemap accordingly.
But there was no consideration for where people actually go when they land on the site.
I told a story about a big company where they had two PhD UX guys. Anytime someone has to announce their pedigree before speaking, you know their idea might be challenged.
They presented their new vision for navigation. But like your earlier example, they gave it to admins or warehouse staff—actual users—and refused to entertain feedback.
A month later, traffic dropped, user experience suffered, and complaints skyrocketed.
Bill Scully (29:07.202)
Wow.
Bill Hunt (29:15.361)
I said, “Of course—nobody can figure out this navigation.”
They asked, “How do you know that? You’re the search guy.” I said, “We have site search. Ninety-four percent of people landing on the homepage went straight into Site Search.”
Bill Scully (29:39.287)
Yeah.
Bill Hunt (29:42.001)
When the majority of users immediately use Site Search, it tells us they can’t figure out where to go.
Bill Scully (29:50.69)
Exactly. Who wakes up thinking, “I want to use site search”? Nobody—unless they’re stuck navigating the site.
Bill Hunt (30:01.959)
Exactly. Another example is wording. The same company had renamed “Services” as a dropdown meant to include products and services. Users clicked expecting customer service, not product info.
We changed it to “Solutions,” and clicks from the navigation dropped. But then we noticed click-to-call on those pages was still people trying to find customer service, not inquire about the services themselves.
Once we stitched all the data together, we understood the real usage patterns.
There are lots of examples, but the point is: are people actually using the site? Use the data you have. High bounce rates are a clear signal.
For example, in International Web Effectiveness, we often looked at hreflang issues. Say your site is for Australia, but New Zealanders land there. If 85% bounce, it’s a clear UX failure.
The page is in Australian dollars, they can’t easily find the New Zealand site, so they hit the back button. And apparently, in 2026, we’re not allowed to have a country selector anymore—even though in 2024 everyone had it in the header or footer.
Bill Scully (32:05.645)
I just ran into this exact same thing. I was looking at a site organized by region and language, and it locked me into Brazil—Portuguese. I wanted to switch back to the English version, so I typed in the English URL, and it redirected me to the Portuguese site again. I had to clear my cookies. What the hell?
Bill Hunt (32:29.887)
Yeah, that’s because they set a cookie.
Most of the time, it’s tied to the cookie consent banner. When you accept cookies, it’s also saving your language and country preference.
You can’t get out of it unless you clear cookies or use an incognito window—and even then, you have to be careful.
Redirects work the same way. For example, if you’re in the U.S. and try to view a Brazilian Portuguese site, it will automatically push you to the U.S. version. There’s no way out unless you use a VPN.
At the end of the day, you just have to look at your data and the process, and spend time testing it.
Bill Scully (33:35.009)
Yeah.
Bill Hunt (34:01.122)
Anything else people should focus on in, say, 30 minutes?
Bill Scully (34:06.999)
Let’s talk about forms. Most people think of forms as just contact forms, but a lot of business is done through forms with more complex functionality.
I had a client—an engineering company—that allowed users to upload drawings. People submitted files, but nobody ever checked if they were actually received.
For six months, they thought everything was fine, but customers assumed the drawings had gone through. Staff had no idea.
Bill Hunt (35:09.259)
That’s interesting.
Bill Scully (35:10.507)
Another example: there’s a ski resort near us that does a Halloween haunted walk. You pick a time slot and get a QR code for entry.
The first year, it worked fine. The second year, I couldn’t remember which email I used. I tried both and couldn’t figure out the password linked to my email.
It’s like the airline example—you enter all the info, and then you can’t submit. On a phone, it’s even worse. The font size was microscopic. It was so frustrating, I must have told five people about it.
Have you had any bad form experiences?
Bill Hunt (36:38.783)
Yeah. Some forms ask you so many questions and then block you entirely.
Bill Scully (36:43.693)
Why do they need my street address? Are they going to drive to my house?
Bill Hunt (36:50.685)
Exactly. And everything is required. Passwords, for example—there are now free scripts that guide users through creating one. You type in your usual password, and the system tells you if it’s missing something.
Bill Scully (36:56.673)
Yeah.
Bill Hunt (37:20.477)
Right? Then it comes back and says, “It doesn’t meet the criteria.” And you’re like, “What’s your criteria? Help me understand.” Then you figure out, okay, it has to be eight characters.
Bill Scully (37:28.061)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s gotten better now. But six, seven years ago, this was extremely common. At least now there’s usually a note: it requires a number, a capital, and a special character.
Bill Hunt (37:49.259)
Exactly. If you require anything, tell us what it is up front. Tell me what I need to provide. What is your magical formula?
Bill Scully (37:57.358)
And before I even enter it, I should know what’s required. Then, if it’s wrong, tell me why—or at least what’s right. How many times have you filled out a form, it kicked it back, and erased all your fields?
Bill Hunt (38:03.859)
Yeah, right.
Bill Hunt (38:15.103)
Maintain the state. Another common issue: the “sign up for a discount” trap. You see a newsletter offer, and you can’t even browse the site without signing up. So you give your throwaway email.
Then it pops up: now you need to give your phone number so they can text you… and sell it to everyone they know. You think, “Nope, I’m not doing that.” Then you never even get the promised code.
Bill Scully (38:52.63)
Yeah.
Bill Hunt (39:17.909)
Exactly. You didn’t realize you had to give both email and phone. I’ll never give my phone number—I get enough spam as it is. Things like this reduce trust and increase friction.
We used to call this “dripping”—collect the minimum info first, then ask for more over time.
Another big one: B2B content gated behind logins. All the good stuff—reports, research—is behind a form.
Even AI tools like Perplexity or ChatGPT can’t access it, and Google can’t showcase it either. I tried citing a report recently, but everything was behind a login. I couldn’t download it, couldn’t access it, so I just skipped it.
It’s a small audience, but it’s the principle: friction prevents engagement.
We have to think through these scenarios. Try the process yourself and make sure you haven’t introduced unnecessary friction.
And there’s friction elsewhere too. You had some notes about other types we should talk about.
Bill Hunt (41:41.793)
There’s also friction behind the scenes, like images that are too large or don’t load properly.
This ties back to using the site on mobile. What other types of friction exist, and what strategies can reduce them?
Bill Scully (42:51.639)
One killer for brands is phone friction. For example, I tried to make a doctor’s appointment—it took 40 minutes on the phone. How is that even possible?
Bill Hunt (43:15.221)
Wow.
Bill Scully (43:21.545)
I called, they said I was at the wrong office, then transferred me. The new office asked every question imaginable to figure out which doctor I needed. I was a new patient, but still—40 minutes is absurd.
At one point, I said, “If possible, I’d like a Friday morning.” I think she almost cried. Their system couldn’t figure out Friday availability, or maybe she wasn’t trained.
Bill Hunt (43:59.84)
Wow. That’s crazy.
I had a similar situation. I tried to open a joint CD at a bank where I already had accounts. Their rules required a phone call. So I had to involve my wife just to authorize it.
You wait online for 20 minutes, and every 30 seconds they remind you: “You can do this on the website.”
Bill Scully (45:11.949)
If anyone runs this type of service: if your average wait time is 10 minutes, do not have a 30-second loop message. My God.
Bill Hunt (45:25.119)
Exactly. They kept reminding me I could do it online, then finally an agent answers: “How can I help you?” My wife is sitting next to me, anticipating the call.
Bill Scully (45:31.659)
Yeah.
Bill Hunt (45:54.924)
The agent asked if I wanted to add the joint owner. I said yes—there was no web option. By now, you’re frustrated because that’s what you tried to do. And yes, it’s scripted, but it doesn’t make it less aggravating.
Bill Hunt (46:24)
It’s on the script, and I did apologize for my frustration. I tried to follow the steps and went through the same set of questions with the person telling me I could do this on the web—when I actually can’t. That’s just frustrating. These loops.
Simply put, there should be an option to acknowledge that the person has already gone through the web gauntlet and is reaching out to a human because it didn’t work.
Bill Scully (47:04)
I hadn’t thought about this, but it’s an idea. What if you created a landing page for all the things you can’t do online?
Bill Scully (47:16)
Right. So when someone searches, “How do I do X?” that page pops up and says, “You can’t do it on the web. Call this number.” Maybe even a specific number for that.
Bill Hunt (47:28)
Anything. Because the system picked up my account data, my wife is in there as well. If they had a way to select your spouse or other joint account members, it would populate automatically.
We’ve had cases where they send something to her for authentication, and she authenticates it. But in this instance, they could have said, “You need to talk to an agent,” and given a secret code or instructions.
There’s a project I’m working on involving a park. Some attractions aren’t functioning, and they have a page listing these attractions under maintenance. We asked if we could amplify this, so when people search for the attraction, they’d know it’s unavailable.
They were furious at the idea. They want to say it’s under maintenance cryptically and remove it from any user interaction as much as legally possible. They don’t want the public to know, because they want people to come and be surprised that the attraction isn’t available. Friction by design.
Bill Scully (48:12)
So, friction by design.
Bill Hunt (48:19)
Exactly. But those days are short-lived. Now, you can just go to AI or Reddit and ask, “How much is it? Can I do this? Is it available? What’s the discount?”
You don’t need a secret handshake or decoder ring anymore. Just put it into ChatGPT or your LLM of choice, and it’ll give you the answer, including how to bypass it.
I think this will change a lot of thinking. At the end of the day, our recommendation is to go through the show notes, identify the top sources of friction, listen to competitors, and most importantly, listen to your customers.
Ask people, “Did you have any challenges doing this today?” Don’t make them fill out a survey before accessing service. If I’m waiting 40 minutes on hold, I’m not going to wait another 40 minutes to tell you my experience.
Bill Scully
All right.
Bill Hunt
Right. I think things like that are important. What we want to do is encourage people to really think about this and elevate the experience.
Every bit of friction you can reduce or remove from these pathways will improve customer satisfaction. Make it easy for me to give you my money and do business with you.
Bill Scully
Exactly. People have choices, and they’re more likely to talk to others about what frustrates them than what goes right. You don’t want your brand to be known only for the things that go wrong.
So here’s what I’d suggest. Do two things. First, come up with a couple of goals that are important on your website. Then, get on your phone and see if you can actually achieve them.
Next, write up a scenario with some detail—because not everyone knows your market or what users are looking for. Give it to people in your company, your friends, or your spouse.
Explain the scenario, who they are, and what their end goal is. Point them to the homepage and ask them to talk out loud about what they’re doing and thinking.
Were all the clicks what they expected? Did they feel happy or frustrated with each click?
Bill Hunt
That sounds great. Loom is a good tool for this—you can use the free version. It captures their experience and emotion as they go through the site.
Or have them do a voice memo while navigating. Anything that captures the actual experience is valuable.
Bill Scully (48:25)
Yeah.
Bill Scully (48:37)
You could also do it with Zoom, Teams, or any video recording. You’d see where their mouse moves, where their eyes go, and their expressions.
You can’t coach them during it, but you can ask questions afterward, like, “Why did you click that?”
Bill Hunt
Exactly. Anything that gives you feedback you can act on is valuable.
Bill Scully
Yeah.
All right. Any final othughts?
Bill Hunt (49:00)
Nope. Just get out there, go through your website, pretend you’re a customer, and see how much frustration you’re causing. That’s it.
Bill Scully (49:20)
Okay. We hope you’re finding value in our conversations. If you’re enjoying the show, please take a moment to rate and review the podcast on your favorite platform.
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Please tell us what you want us to discuss and what your frustrations are. We may even cite your input in a future episode.
Till next time. Thanks, Bill.
Bill Hunt (49:46)
Yep. Thank you. Have a good one.