Today, digital experience innovation is no longer optional: it’s a business necessity. According to the 2025 Digital Experience Benchmark by Contentsquare (link in the content), the cost per visit has surged by 19% in the past two years, while overall website traffic dropped by 3.3%. Faced with rising acquisition costs and increasingly demanding customers, brands must reinvent their digital experiences to stay competitive and relevant.
Why digital experience innovation is essential for customer engagement
The shift toward paid traffic, now representing 39% of total traffic (up from 37%), reflects the growing challenge of attracting and retaining customers. Yet, as brands invest more in driving traffic, user engagement is decreasing. The same benchmark shows a 6.5% drop in content consumption, especially among new visitors, and conversion rates continue to fall, particularly for paid traffic sources.
This gap between user expectations and brand experiences highlights why innovating the digital experience is critical. Brands that succeed in creating seamless, engaging journeys can counteract declining engagement and rising costs by focusing on what users value most:
Fast, intuitive navigation
Personalized content and recommendations
Error-free, frustration-free experiences
How to drive innovation and reduce friction across digital journeys
One of the most powerful insights from the Contentsquare report is the impact of frustration on user behavior. More than 1 in 3 visits are affected by frustration signals, such as rage clicks and slow-loading pages, directly hurting conversion and retention. Notably, companies that actively monitor and address these pain points reduce frustration 4.5 times more effectively than those that don’t.
To truly innovate, brands need to focus on reducing friction throughout the customer journey. This includes:
Identifying where users drop off and optimizing these touchpoints.
Using real-time analytics and session replays to understand user struggles.
Leveraging AI-driven insights to prioritize the most impactful changes.
Interestingly, the report also emphasizes that mobile experiences remain under-optimized, even though mobile accounts for the majority of visits. Visitors on mobile apps, especially returning users, spend 3.1 minutes per visit, significantly more than on mobile web. Innovating mobile experiences through better UX, speed, and personalization is key to unlocking growth.
From insight to action: making digital innovation a continuous process
Digital experience innovation isn’t a one-time effort. The best-performing brands use continuous monitoring and optimization, adjusting their strategies as user behaviors evolve. By integrating tools that offer deep experience analytics, brands can:
Quickly detect and resolve emerging issues before they impact revenue.
Adapt content and navigation flows based on real user interactions.
Align business and customer goals by prioritizing changes that improve both experience and performance.
In an era where users expect effortless, relevant, and delightful experiences, embracing data-driven innovation allows brands to stay ahead of competitors and to turn each visit into an opportunity for conversion and loyalty.
Chief Customer Officer at Contentsquare