You’ve written the best sales page in the world. You hit all the customer’s concerns and solve all the problems they haven’t been able to solve. You offered them a great deal at a price they can afford. They said in their head, “I’ve decided to buy this product,” and yet no money makes it into your account, and no product leaves your shelf.
Why?
The customer gave up trying to figure out how to buy the stupid thing you were selling.
If a customer can’t actually figure out how to buy your product, they walk away. And attention spans are short.
I’ve seen it in my own life. I drove up to a drive-thru restaurant the other day and drove away after nobody spoke to me for at least a minute.
Am I impatient? Not usually (maybe that day). I just decided that if it was going to be difficult to place my order here, I’d rather drive next door to the other restaurant that would make the experience easier.
And I wasn’t really that invested in visiting that particular restaurant anyway. Still, they could’ve had my money. But maybe they didn’t really want it. No hard feelings either way I suppose.
What is Sales Friction
When selling in person, it’s easier to see what “friction” exists in the experience for the customer. Perhaps the checkout process is slow, or the product can’t be found on the shelf.
Online, the process is a little more abstract. Every little button click on a website is “friction.” Every text box for someone to enter information is friction. The layout of the website could be friction.
Think of all the parts of a website that cause the customer to pause, take an action, or read something:
- Page load times
- Finding the price
- Payment processing wait times
- Button clicks
- Links to other pages
- Entering information in a text box
Try to Buy Your Own Product
An eye-opening way to see if there’s friction on your website, is to try it out yourself. Try and buy your own product. Go through every step but the last one. (Don’t accidentally charge yourself!) Compare desktop and mobile for this.
Look for the buttons you can press to buy the product. Try and enter your credit card information. And I mean, do it wrong and see what happens.Is there some corrective help the website offers? Are any links broken or misleading? Don’t always trust that just because there’s a label and steps telling you what to do that your customer sees it.
Are there any steps you found difficult or slow? One link not working could cause someone to believe your whole website is sketchy. Every button click and text box during the sales process is an opportunity for the customer to get distracted by a phone notification and forget to come back.
Website Standards
People have been online for so long at this point, they make assumptions on how a trustworthy website should work. Compare your site to your friends’ and your competitors’. Are the text and photos in similar places? Are your eyes drawn to specific buttons or colors? How many clicks does it take for you to buy their product? See if you can reduce any friction you find on those sites.
I don’t think most people are trying to be impatient. It’s most likely people are trying to protect themselves from unfamiliar websites that might try and steal from them.
Most people don’t feel comfortable giving up personal information like their home address if there’s no reason to. Any sort of slow loading screens or broken links and people could be worried that there’s a virus on the other end.
You can’t be there in person to show them that you’re not trying to scam them, so you have to prepare the website in such a way so they don’t have to question the validity of their purchase. It’s like building a comforting entryway into your home. Make them feel welcome at purchase, and they will stick around and come back for more.