Overcoming frustration: You’re wasting digital dollars if you don’t address website friction

[Jahangir655]

As digital marketing costs continue to swell, a counterintuitive trend is emerging: increased spend is not proportionally attracting more web traffic.

In fact, despite plenty of brands ramping up investment, research from experience analytics platform Contentsquare shows web traffic has dipped by 3.6 per cent in the last 12 months, driving the cost per visit up by a staggering 9.4 per cent in 2023 alone.

Couple that with the fact that web visitors consumed less site content last year, viewing fewer pages and there’s a clear challenge for brands that rely on digital. Mobile, in particular, saw dwell times down with the average visiting lasting less than 2.5 minutes.

With the gap between spend and efficiency widening, brands that rely on digital advertising need to do everything they can to optimise their investment.

The root of this issue, according to Contentsquare’s 2024 Digital paraguay mobile phone numbers database Experience Benchmark Report, is frustration – friction on websites that hampers potential customer engagement.

Using analysis from more than 43 billion sessions and 200 billion page views across 3,590 websites, the report found that last year, almost 40 per cent of user sessions were marred by frustration, most often slow page loads, Javascript errors, and excessive rage clicks – that’s when a person clicks an element on a website at least three times in less than two seconds. We’ve all been there.

These aren’t just minor inconveniences; they are critical failures in user experience that drive potential customers away, degrading both the perceived quality of your digital presence and your bottom line.

Contentsquare Marketing Lead for APJ Neha Garg said: “Two in five web visits include frustration, which is which is quite a lot. There is a bit of variance between industries but one to call out is travel and hospitality where about 50 per cent of website visitors face frustration.”