Surface customer struggle with Clicktale’s Friction Score

One of Clicktale’s most exciting new developments – one from which many of our customers are already reaping the benefits – is Friction Score, a proprietary algorithm that measures a range of metrics to uncover visits with high levels of struggle. By prioritizing optimizations and quantifying UX and usability issues, our customers are creating better experiences and helping their customers achieve their goals.

The Friction Score algorithm measures a range of metrics that signal friction in the customer journey, such as rage clicks, validation errors, repeated scrolling, slow typing speed and dozens of other indications of confusion, hesitation and unusual behavior. These metrics are measured for each pageview, and no customization is needed.

One of the reasons Friction Score is such a hit with our customers: it surfaces issues and helps them prioritize optimization efforts. “What we gleaned through a Friction Score analysis of our checkout process was, frankly, eye-opening,” one customer told me. “I am so excited about this new feature!”

Configuration Pages

One type of page that seems prone to high friction are configuration pages, namely the visitor is supposed to configure a device he/she wants to purchase. One of our customers in the technology space found several such instances of friction. For example, we saw an 84% friction level, which is quite high, because visitors were clicking options that were unavailable. There was repeated clicking on the same element, repeated hovering and visitors spent a long time on the page. When we examined further, we saw that visitors were clicking on greyed out selections. Up to 9% of visitors clicked on greyed-out selections at least three times.

In a different example from a configuration page, the add-to-cart button was unclickable, even though the options checked appeared to be available. This led to a friction score of 79%, which is also considered very high. On further analysis, the products were out-of-stock, which is why the add-to-cart button was unclickable.

Cart Pages

In a separate example, a leading e-commerce provider saw a high level of friction on the cart page because visitors were trying to check their carts before they interacted with any other element on the page. The visitors didn’t understand that they needed to enter their email addresses to retrieve the contents of their cart, and thus the page had a friction score of 84%, which is considered high. This was surfaced due to the consecutive clicks on the “Retrieve Cart” button. One simple way for the retailer to avoid this friction, we recommended, would be to highlight the email field just above the Retrieve Cart button.

For several additional examples of how Clicktale’s Friction Score can help your business, read the infographic below:
