-
More from Academy Xi
- For Individuals
- Digital Transformation Academy
- AI Futures Academy
- Academy Xi: Nano Labs
We offer training across a wide range of course formats and disciplines. Speak to our team today to get you, your team, or your organisation digital ready!
Speak to us today!
We offer training across a wide range of course formats and disciplines. Speak to our team today to get you, your team, or your organisation digital ready!
Speak to us today!
-
More from Academy Xi
- For Individuals
- Digital Transformation Academy
- AI Futures Academy
- Academy Xi: Nano Labs
What makes a website effective at attracting, engaging, and converting customers? You may say it’s an aesthetically appealing design, well-worded sales copy, or a strategically developed inbound marketing strategy.
However, while all of these factors contribute to impressive performance, they’re not sufficient to drive results if your user experience design is not up to par.
Internet user behaviour research clearly indicates that friction reduces engagement and conversion rates. Studies have even found that 88% of consumers are less likely to return to a website after a single bad experience (whereas well-designed UI lifts conversions by more than 200%).
It’s also worth noting that consumer expectations are constantly evolving, especially among younger audiences who demand frictionless online experiences, browse primarily on mobile devices, and readily evaluate brand credibility based on website design and usability.
With this in mind, you’ll want to identify the hidden friction points in your commercial website’s design. It’s equally crucial to employ smart UX design tactics to solve (and prevent) all potential issues. This article breaks down some of those tactics. So, let’s get into it.
Digitise High-Touch Sales Funnel Entrypoints
One of the most significant conversion obstacles that the majority of businesses come across during the sales cycle is a complex entry point into the sales funnel. Why? Because today’s consumers want convenience, not another task on their never-ending to-do lists.
Recent research even confirms that convenience now ranks among the top purchasing factors for shoppers looking for solutions to their pain points.
McKinsey, for example, found that consumers’ tolerance for friction and inconvenience is decreasing — and they expect the trend to continue. Moreover, a survey conducted by Morgan Stanley revealed that 77% of U.S. consumers consider convenience (defined as comfort, speed, accessibility, and availability) to be a key factor in driving their buying behaviour. In fact, this survey shows that people are willing to pay up to 5% more if it makes resolving their pain points easier.
So, how can you use these findings in your website’s UX design to create a more enjoyable browsing experience for visitors and potential customers?
To begin, think about the entry point into your sales funnel. Does it rely on a complex offline or human-enabled interaction? If yes, then perhaps it’s a good idea to see if you can digitise it. That way, you won’t just create a more convenient and user-friendly way for potential customers to begin their buyer’s journey (and start on the road to removing their pain points). You’ll also automate the very beginning of your sales funnel, which is crucial for the subsequent steps of nurturing leads into customers.
For example, check out how RapidDirect does it on its website. Instead of forcing potential clients to get in touch, this brand offers web visitors the opportunity to get an “instant quote.”
This UX design tactic allows prospects to upload a file of the part they need. Then, the brand provides them with an instant price and lead time quotation. This simple automated step helps avoid the frustrating back-and-forth that’s usually required before production can begin. Additionally, it significantly shortens delivery times, which RapidDirect understands is a crucial buying factor for its target audience.
Our courses
Return to homepage
Categories
Related posts
Additionally, product finder quizzes, calculators, and other awareness-stage interactive tools can be effective at accomplishing similar results. If you decide to add them to your website, prioritise user value — particularly educational value — and utilise them in a way that draws prospects into the sales cycle while also nudging them toward the lower stages of the funnel.
Decrease the Amount of Reading a Visitor Has to Do
A commonly overlooked user experience friction point on commercial websites (and other digital distribution channels) is the simple fact that people have very little patience for reading large blocks of text.
Internet user behaviour studies from the Nielsen Norman Group have found that most people don’t read but skim text online. Additionally, studies and surveys consistently show that internet users prefer and seek out opportunities to learn about products and services via multimedia formats.
For instance, Wyzowl’s 2025 survey revealed that 78% of internet users prefer to learn about a product by watching a short video (compared to 9% who prefer text-based articles, 5% who want ebooks or manuals, 3% who like infographics, and 2% who prefer sales calls).
Or, if you look at HubSpot’s State of Marketing Report, you’ll find that the top ROI types of content for 2025 include short-form video, images, live-streamed video, audio, and UGC — all multimedia formats that make information-collection easy and engaging.
With this in mind, a UX design tactic you can use to remove common friction points on your website is to replace text with video on key pages. The simple swap can help web visitors collect relevant pre-purchase information without forcing them to read long blocks of text and tiring them out.
Check out how Bay Alarm Medical implements this strategy throughout its site. This brand utilises multiple opportunities to communicate via video instead of text, including for social proof, product descriptions, influencer interviews, etc..
This UX tactic clearly works because it makes it easier for visitors to consume information through multimedia content. On top of that, the use of video also works because it:
- enhances product understanding
- reduces cognitive load
- supports visual hierarchy
- makes the browsing experience faster and more modern than what it would be if it attempted to communicate all this information through text
Don’t Force Different Audience Segments to Consume the Same Nurturing Content
A mere decade ago, personalisation in web design was a welcome albeit rare UX perk. In 2025, however, it’s a non-negotiable aspect of an enjoyable and conversion-oriented website experience.
A 2021 survey from McKinsey revealed that 71% of consumers expect companies to deliver personalised interactions (and 76% become frustrated when this doesn’t happen).
Furthermore, data from 2025 reveals that 8 in 10 shoppers ignore irrelevant marketing messages, 71% of consumers become frustrated when that happens, and 25% are less likely to convert after such an experience.
With this in mind, a friction point you must remove from your website if you want to drive success is the lack of relevance.
To present web visitors and potential customers with an enjoyable (and productive) browsing experience, don’t cast the informational net too wide. Bombarding them with irrelevant data or value propositions won’t make them more likely to invest in your solutions. On the contrary, this approach is much more likely to result in alienation and a gradual exit from your sales funnel.
Instead, take the time to create landing pages for each of your audience segments. Use those destinations to promote user-centric content that speaks directly to the needs and aspirations of these prospects.
The first step to accomplishing this goal through UX design is to optimise your site’s navigation in a way that will naturally guide prospects to the pages and content, which are tailored to their needs.
By using UX copy to optimise site navigation — as Dial My Calls does with the ‘Who Uses Us’ navigation element and the ‘Mass notification solutions for your industry’ section on the homepage — you can create a simple yet effective system for segmenting web visitors and presenting them with hyper-relevant content that will show them you have what they need to resolve their pain points.
A good rule of thumb for implementing this tactic is to use your website analytics to measure conversions, engagement rates, and dwell times on landing pages tailored to specific audience segments. If the results meet your expectations, that’s a clear signal that your UX approach is working. However, if you start seeing high click-through rates followed by high bounce rates, that might be a signal that your on-page content also needs a dose of personalisation to ensure a relevant and enjoyable user experience.
Simplify the Functionality that Leads to a Transaction
Do you know the percentage of web visitors who add items to their carts but fail to follow through with a purchase? According to the latest data from the Baymard Institute, it’s 70.19% of people. However, what’s even more interesting is that a significant portion of these cart abandonments happen due to complex checkout processes, the inability to check out as a guest, a lack of transparency regarding shipping or extra costs, and even a lack of available payment methods.
So, if you want to remove hidden friction points from your website, simplifying functionalities that lead to a transaction is an excellent way to use UX to boost conversions.
Remember, consumers want convenience, speed, and comfort. So, something as simple as giving them an express checkout option — which is what Mannequin Mall does on its ecommerce site — can be an easy method of removing a common conversion obstacle.
If you’re prepared to employ more advanced UX design tactics, then those could genuinely boost your visitors’ shopping experience as well. The free shipping calculator from Otherland is an excellent example of next-level UX (and UI) design.
Alternatively, you could experiment with upfront shipping cost calculators, advanced payment options (buy now, pay later), and even consumable product subscriptions that automate customer lifetime value maximisation.
Avoid Intrusive Ads that Boost Short-Term Conversions but Erode Trust
Intrusive ads are some of the most commonly overlooked friction points on commercial websites.
According to Emarketer, consumers find several ad categories to be frustrating and annoying, including video ads that play automatically (with or without sound), ads that violate consumer privacy, and persistent banners for products they’ve already purchased.
But what’s even more concerning is that intrusive and disruptive webpage elements significantly harm web visitors’ browsing experience, potentially leading to decreased conversion rates or even harming your brand’s reputation.
With this in mind, a simple hack to remove friction points from your website and create an enjoyable experience through smart UX design is to avoid (or at least minimise) intrusive and disruptive ads on key pages.
Yes, these elements — particularly pop-ups that offer savings or rewards in exchange for a conversion — can elevate conversions. But that effect is only temporary. And if the disruptions happen too often (or come off as too aggressive), they can even erode brand trust, which is a prerequisite for converting customers in the first place.
To avoid this hidden friction point and elevate your site’s usability (and conversion potential), you’ll want to present your audience with attractive offers without making it feel like emotional blackmail.
For example, the Pride of India homepage includes two reward-based conversion elements. However, neither of them is so large or disruptive as to prevent visitors from comfortably browsing the website.
The ‘Here’s 15% off’ newsletter subscription pop-up in the lower-right-hand corner is attention-grabbing without being overwhelming. Additionally, the ‘Earn Rewards’ button on the left-hand side of the screen invites shoppers to interact with the brand off-site without being aggressive in doing so.
Additional easy UX hacks that remove web user frustrations include disabling audio and video autoplay, making it easy for visitors to dismiss or close ads, optimising the timing of when certain elements appear, and reducing the overall number of webpage elements that could disrupt your web visitors’ flow.
Design Training to Remove Friction at the Source
Finally, when it comes to identifying and eliminating hidden friction points on a commercial website through UX tactics, it’s worth noting that the best way to ensure an enjoyable browsing experience for your audience is to know exactly what you’re doing from the very beginning of the design process.
At the end of the day, UX mistakes have a very strong ability to creep into even the best designers’ visions. However, proper training can make these instances much rarer. That’s why it’s essential to continually expand your UX design knowledge, keep up with current trends and web user behaviours, and invest in continual learning to allow you to stay ahead of the curve.
To help teams eliminate website friction from within, we offer practical, expert-driven design training — anchored by our 1-day Introduction to Human-Centred Design (HCD) workshop — for corporate, government, not-for-profit, and agency teams. During the workshop, you’ll learn to build baseline capability and a shared language across functions. Your team will also gain an understanding of a repeatable process to research, ideate, implement, and iterate (driving empathy and collaboration). At the end, leave with best-practice mindsets, practical artefacts, and an HCD toolkit to embed change and improve results.
Ready to bring HCD to your team and make friction a thing of the past? Book a call with us today and see how we can help you.
Final Thoughts
Identifying friction points in your website’s UX design can seem daunting — especially if you’re inexperienced at fixing these errors by yourself. But the simple truth is, paying attention to usability and web performance genuinely pays off.
At the end of the day, removing these hidden conversion killers won’t just benefit your business by elevating engagement and conversion rates on your website. These investments will also have a positive impact on your brand’s reputation, making your target audience far more likely to interact with your business in the future. Plus, research clearly shows that better user (and customer) experiences drive brand loyalty, which is key to long-term business success.
So, don’t hesitate to look out for these hidden conversion killers in your UX design. Even more importantly, don’t neglect to address basic web usability elements like site speed, mobile responsiveness, accessibility, and security. Admittedly, making improvements in this regard might not make a big difference visually. But your business outcomes are sure to improve, making these tweaks more than worth your time.
Top courses
For individuals
For organisations
Talent
Company
Talent
Resources
Academy Xi acknowledges Traditional Owners of Country throughout Australia and recognises the continuing connection to lands, waters and communities. We pay our respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures; and to Elders past and present. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples should be aware that this website may contain images or names of people who have since passed away.
Copyright 2025 © AcademyXi
