What is friction? According to the dictionary, friction is a resistance that one surface or object encounters when moving over another.

That's a technical definition. Let's explain it to a 5-year-old.

Imagine you are playing with your toy car on different surfaces. When you push the car on a smooth, shiny floor, it goes very far and fast. But pushing it on a rough carpet doesn't go as far or as fast.

The difference in smoothness is what friction is!

In business, the game's goal is to remove customer friction. Your success as a business depends on the coefficient of friction of the problem you are trying to solve for your customers.

Here are two stories displaying different levels of friction:

Make the Subsidies Request Seamless

The EU's energy goal for 2030 is to turn the old continent greener. To help with this goal, EU members subsidise isolation work their citizens undertake in their houses and office buildings.

You must finish the isolation work and submit a subsidy request as a citizen. In Belgium, for example, this is a 7 steps process. Depending on the improvement in your assets, you must fill in a dozen PDF files. This process is tedious and can take weeks to complete. Moreover, there's a window of 1 year between the end of the work in your assets and the moment you request the subsidies.

In fact, most people don't even submit requests since this process isn't straightforward.

After working with an entrepreneur who helps people make these requests, we discovered that the friction coefficient is about 7 to 8.

We built a product that automates these steps and reduces the coefficient of friction to about 3. We're still working to bring this coefficient to 1, but the road to that goal is challenging.

Automate the payment flow

A friend of mine runs an amazing language school. He trains about 3000 students per year.

His school is so successful that students walk to his office to pay for the course when they can't pay online with international cards. Once the payments are made, his assistant must manually enrol each student.

After visiting him at his office, I asked his assistant to show me the full process. The friction level was quite high at around 8.

Improving that payment process can lead to a 25% enrolment in the courses along with freeing 5 to 6 hours of work per week for each member of his staff.

The process went beyond just the payment. A whole customer services backend was included.

A simple Stripe integration with Zapier should reduce friction to zero (0). It takes one day to implement, test, and ship.

How to identify the coefficient of friction

User Behavior Analytics

• Session Duration and Flow:

  • Long Sessions in Key Areas: If users spend too much time on a particular step or screen, it may indicate they are struggling.
  • Drop-off Points: Identify where users abandon tasks or leave the site/app. High drop-off rates at certain points suggest friction.

• Click Analysis:

  • Excessive Clicks: Users clicking multiple times on the same button or area can indicate confusion or unresponsive elements.
  • Heatmaps: Visual tools like heatmaps show where users are clicking, moving, and scrolling, highlighting potential pain points.

User Feedback

• Surveys and Feedback Forms:

  • User Satisfaction Scores (e.g., NPS, CSAT): Direct feedback from users can reveal areas of high friction.
  • Open-ended Questions: Allow users to describe their difficulties in words, providing qualitative insights.

• Customer Support Inquiries:

  • Common Issues: Track frequent issues reported to customer support to identify problematic areas in the user experience.
  • Response Time and Resolution Rate: Slow response times can indicate that users are encountering significant friction.

Performance Metrics

• Task Completion Rates:

  • Success Rates: Measure how often users successfully complete key tasks. Lower completion rates suggest higher friction.
  • Time to Completion: The time it takes users to complete tasks can indicate efficiency and ease of use.

• Error Rates:

  • Form Errors: High form error rates (e.g., incorrect input, validation errors) suggest user difficulty.
  • Navigation Errors: Track instances where users must backtrack or correct their navigation paths.

Usability Testing

• A/B Testing:

  • Comparative Testing: Compare different feature versions to see which one has lower friction.
  • Behavioral Changes: Monitor changes impacting user behavior and identify which variations reduce friction.

• User Testing Sessions:

  • Observation: Watch users interact with the product to see where they struggle.
  • Think-Aloud Protocol: Have users verbalize their thoughts while using the product to gain insight into their experience.

Technical Metrics

• Page Load Times:

  • Slow Load Times: This can frustrate users and increase friction, particularly on mobile devices.
  • Performance Monitoring: Use tools to monitor and optimize load times continuously.

• Crash and Bug Reports:

  • Frequency and Severity: High numbers of crashes or bugs can significantly disrupt the user experience.

How to reduce the coefficient of friction

You can combine these methods to obtain a holistic view of the issues. However, the solution is not always to build things. It could be about integrating existing tools such as Stripe, Zapier, WordPress, Webflow, and other No-Code platforms. When a piece is missing, you can assemble a quick backend and connect APIs.

The best products reduce friction for their customers. As a software engineer, I like investigating systems and removing unnecessary friction. Removing friction can take a day, 10 days, or even longer.

I'll be writing about my experience removing friction for my customers. Subscribe below to read and learn from someone on the field.