3 types of user friction that hurt conversions—and how to prevent them

User friction should be top of mind for every UX team, product designer, and marketer because it’s one of the biggest threats to your product’s success. Frustrating user experiences (UX) and friction points cause everything from annoyed users and increased drop-offs to lower conversion rates and lost revenue. 

Reducing user friction is essential to delighting and retaining your customers long term. But to do this effectively, you need to know exactly why friction is occurring in the first place—and deeply empathize with user needs to address it.

Read on to learn about the 3 types of user friction that damage the customer experience, how to find them on your site or product, and the user-centric tools and strategies you need to combat them.

Key insights

• User friction negatively impacts your product (and business) performance, so teams need to stay vigilant against the 3 main types: interaction friction, cognitive friction, and emotional friction

• To successfully find and fix moments of user friction, you need to combine quantitative and qualitative data to truly understand the underlying reasons for the issue and how it impacts the entire customer experience

• Use AI-powered tools to identify and analyze user friction, then make data-driven optimizations to improve customer satisfaction, enhance retention, and increase conversions  

3 types of user friction (and how to identify them)

User friction (also called user experience friction)  is anything that prevents a user from completing their goal on your site or product. Whether it’s annoying pop-ups that interrupt their browsing or an extra step that turns them off from making a purchase, UX friction leads to user frustration, poor user engagement, and even customer churn.

User friction happens for a range of reasons and it can take many forms, which is why there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to addressing it. To effectively solve your users’ problems, you need to first understand what’s causing them.

According to product management expert Sachin Rekhi, there are 3 main forms of user friction to watch out for: interaction friction, cognitive friction, and emotional friction. Here’s what to know about each type, and how to find—and fix—them.

1. Interaction friction

Interaction friction is caused by issues with your user interface (UI) that prevent users from accomplishing their goal. This happens when your UI design hinders rather than helps your users; think of user pain points like software bugs or unresponsive design. 

Some common examples of interaction friction are

• Broken links that interrupt the user journey

• Hard-to-click buttons (like pop-ups or modals with tiny ‘x’ buttons that become impossible to close on mobile devices)

• Slow load times

• JavaScript and API errors

Note: this is the type of friction teams traditionally focus on, because it’s easy to quantify: there’s a clear error or bug causing problems that needs to be fixed. But to get more context on how users are experiencing this friction—and its impact on their journey—remember to combine quantitative and qualitative data. That way, you can not only fix, but also improve your customers’ experience.

How to find and fix interaction friction

• View heatmaps to get an aggregated view of user behavior on key pages and uncover areas or elements that cause friction

• Watch session replays featuring interaction issues and errors to see them in context and understand how they impact the product experience

• Get immediate error alerts in your workspace (like Slack or Microsoft Teams) to surface issues in real time and mobilize your team to quickly fix them

💡 Pro tip: use Contentsquare’s AI-powered Session Replay Summaries to save hours of analysis and pinpoint areas to watch out for. Instantly discover key insights (like where users went next), identify potential issues, and get an aggregated summary of behavioral trends—all with time-coded links that let you jump to the exact moment in question for extra detail. 

Filter sessions using Contentsquare’s frustration score capability to quickly find issues and prioritize by impact. Monitor signals of frustration like rage clicks, repeat submission attempts, and slow load times, then use Contentsquare’s Impact Quantification capability to understand how they affect conversions and revenue. That way, you’ll be able to make data-driven decisions about which fixes to work on first. 

Contentsquare’s AI-powered Session Replay Summaries give you instant insights, while the frustration score reveals the most impactful (and costly) areas of user friction

2. Cognitive friction

Cognitive friction is the mental effort it takes users to complete a task, also known as its cognitive load. This type of user friction occurs when people have to think too hard about what they need to do next.

Some causes of cognitive friction include

• Unintuitive user journeys

• Forms with too many steps, which can lead to confusion or decision paralysis

• Overly complex onboarding processes

• Confusing layouts in your product’s interface

How to find and fix cognitive friction

• Analyze common customer journeys with Contentsquare’s Journey Analysis capability to understand how users navigate your site from beginning to end and find looping behaviors or drop-offs that might signify cognitive friction. You can then compare these to successful journeys with high conversion rates to see where you can make improvements, such as adding extra content or streamlining user flows.

• Launch an exit-intent survey on pages with high drop-off rates or high user frustration scores to understand why people leave without completing their goal

• Run unmoderated user tests to see how people naturally approach certain workflows and capture their thought processes in real time. See where (and why) they struggle to complete tasks, and ask for user feedback afterward to learn how you can improve.

💡 Pro tip: streamline analysis with Contentsquare’s AI CoPilot. Ask questions about your data in plain language and get easy-to-understand answers with relevant charts and explanations—no analytics training necessary.

Quickly get answers to questions like

• How does the user experience compare between desktop and mobile devices?

• Which pages have the most drop-offs?

• What channel has the highest conversion rate?

Then, use these insights to kickstart your analysis and experimentation.

AI CoPilot compares engagement between desktop and mobile devices

3. Emotional friction

Emotional friction is when a user experiences negative feelings that prevent them from completing a task. These emotions can arise as a result of your product (anger because they’re unable to complete their task due to poor functionality) or be associated with the task itself (anxiety because what they’re trying to do feels difficult for personal reasons).

Some causes of emotional friction include

• Misleading product or marketing messaging leading to frustration, disappointment, or anger. For example, users thought they could add their whole team to a workspace, but they can only add 3 new users on their current pricing plan.

• UX errors at high-stakes moments, like during financial or time-based transactions (such as on the checkout page for a concert with limited tickets)

• Tasks with an emotional charge, such as updating your LinkedIn profile when searching for a new job or creating a to-do list from scratch for a big upcoming project

How to find and fix emotional friction

• Conduct in-depth user research with user interviews to learn more about the motivations and emotions of your target audience, as well as negative and positive past experiences you can learn from

• Use A/B testing to hone your messaging. Test content, microcopy, and design to see which combinations drive the best results, and explore why your winning variants won by diving into session replays and heatmaps. 

• Collect user feedback using lightweight customer satisfaction or Net Promoter Score® (NPS®) surveys to measure user sentiment throughout their journey. If you’re using Contentsquare, you can jump from surveys into associated session replays to zoom in on areas of friction. You can also incorporate social listening tools (such as Sprout Social) to track how customers talk about your brand or product across other channels. 

💡Pro tip: get insights from your ideal customer profile (ICP) with Contentsquare’s Interviews capability. Invite your own participants, follow up with a user who left negative feedback, or choose from a diverse pool of over 200,000 potential interviewees to ensure you’re capturing data from key user segments. 

Ask tailored questions based on patterns you’ve identified in survey responses, session replays, and customer journey analysis. Dig deep into the causes of emotional friction so you can empathize with—and address—your target audience’s needs.

Contentsquare’s Interviews capability lets you engage with your users to uncover the causes of emotional friction

3 benefits of reducing user friction

Reducing user friction creates better digital experiences for your customers, which is crucial for product performance, marketing success, and business growth. Here are 3 ways reducing user friction boosts your business.

1. Delight your customers

Reducing friction helps users complete their tasks more easily, with less cognitive effort and fewer distractions. It’s no surprise that seamless, friction-free user experiences are directly linked to more satisfied customers. 

For example, Halfords, the UK’s leading provider of motoring and cycling products and services, used Contentsquare’s Session Replay capability to contextualize negative feedback and examine the underlying cause of friction. They used these insights to improve their customer experience, driving a 2.4% increase in NPS® after just 2 months.

2. Improve long-term retention

Frustration factors—like slow page loads, JavaScript errors, and rage clicks—cause users to cut their visits short, preventing them from engaging with your product or brand, reaching their ‘aha’ moments, and becoming long-term customers.

Removing these obstacles can significantly improve user engagement and retention. Contentsquare’s 2025 Digital Experience Benchmarks Report found that sites with the highest retention rates had 17% fewer rage clicks per page and earned 18% more page views per visit, showing a direct link between smoother UI and UX and returning, engaged users.

3. Increase conversions and revenue

For ecommerce and SaaS businesses, bounces and drop-offs aren’t just a metric to watch—they’re lost revenue. 

When luxury retailer Harrods used Contentsquare to uncover the source of user friction on their checkout form and payment page, they found a missed error message was causing them to lose approximately 1,000 monthly conversions. By fixing this (and other) points of friction, the digital team at Harrods were able to make improvements that resulted in a 50% decrease in rage clicks and an 8% reduction in cart abandonment.

Reduce user friction to increase customer satisfaction

Interaction friction, cognitive friction, and emotional friction all take a toll on your product—and on your users. To create better digital experiences, look holistically at both the moment of friction and the underlying cause, and use data-driven insights to prioritize effective, empathetic solutions.

FAQs about reducing user friction