Glassbox Ebook: The Friction Report
- Brittani Wynn
- Apr 8
- 4 min read
The UX You Didn’t Know Was Failing: 7 Places You’re Losing Customers (and How to Fix Them Fast)
Preface: Friction Isn’t Always Loud
Not all friction throws up an error message. Sometimes it looks like hesitation. Confusion. A scroll-and-bounce. A perfectly functional page that just doesn’t convert.
This is the kind of friction your customers don’t complain about—because they don’t stick around long enough to tell you. They leave quietly. Which means by the time it shows up in your churn report, it’s already too late.
This ebook dives into the quiet friction hiding in plain sight. We’ll explore seven overlooked places where your experience is leaking trust, time, and revenue—and how top teams are identifying, fixing, and learning from those moments using real-time behavioral data.
Let’s surface the issues you didn’t know were there. Because invisible friction is still friction.
Table of Contents
Why Invisible Friction Is the Most Expensive Kind
The Checkout That Checks People Out
Form Fields That Break Trust
Mobile UX That Doesn’t Move
Dead Buttons and Rage Clicks
Tooltip Confusion and Microcopy Misses
Onboarding Drop-Offs That Hide in Plain Sight
Building a Friction-Finding Culture
1. Why Invisible Friction Is the Most Expensive Kind
It’s easy to find the big, loud errors. Broken buttons. 404s. Angry tweets. But silent friction? That’s where the money leaks.
Invisible friction causes:
Abandonment without complaint
Support tickets that don’t reflect actual issues
Dev teams chasing the wrong priorities
What makes it so dangerous is that it often looks like success. A page loads. A button works. But your conversion rate tanks.
In a Glassbox analysis of over 1 billion sessions, we found that nearly 70% of major drop-off points occurred on pages with zero recorded technical errors.
The pages weren’t broken. The experience was.
2. The Checkout That Checks People Out
Case in Point: A luxury e-comm brand noticed a steep drop at the final stage of checkout. Replay data showed that international users were pausing for nearly 18 seconds on the shipping selection screen—and then leaving.
The reason? The screen defaulted to a domestic-only option. Users didn’t see the dropdown. They thought international shipping wasn’t offered.
Fixing the UI led to a 22% lift in international checkouts.
Lesson: If people leave during conversion’s most critical moment, it’s not always a bug. Sometimes it’s design that feels broken.
3. Form Fields That Break Trust
We love a good form. But the wrong field at the wrong time? That’s a trust-killer.
Common offenders:
Asking for a phone number with no context
Requiring zip code before a user commits
Autofill conflicts that erase user data
Replay data showed that a SaaS onboarding flow lost 37% of users on the page where they asked for a company size. Once they moved that question further down the funnel, drop-offs dropped 23%.
Not every field needs to lead. Some questions earn more honest answers later.
4. Mobile UX That Doesn’t Move
In our data, mobile users accounted for over 65% of session volume. But they’re also 2.5x more likely to abandon during micro-frustration moments.
Friction patterns to watch:
Tap targets that are too small
Inputs that are hidden under modals
Slow loading transitions or scroll lock bugs
A global banking app saw a 31% drop-off on mobile form fields that required multi-step verification. They redesigned the flow for smaller screens, and completions jumped 19%.
Mobile UX isn’t just responsive design. It’s emotionally responsive design.
5. Dead Buttons and Rage Clicks
One of the most common causes of silent friction? UI elements that look clickable but aren’t.
We’ve seen rage clicks:
On grayed-out buttons with no tooltip
In image carousels that don’t swipe
On filters that fail silently
In one retail experience, 14% of users were rage-clicking a promo code "apply" button that had already applied the code automatically. The fix? Removing the button and replacing it with a success checkmark. Result: 11% conversion lift.
6. Tooltip Confusion and Microcopy Misses
Words matter. A lot.
We’ve seen tooltips that confuse more than they clarify. Buttons labeled with jargon. CTAs that say "Next" instead of what’s actually next.
One fintech product saw a 44% drop-off at the document upload stage. Replay showed users hovering over the tooltip, re-reading, then leaving.
It said "passport required." Turns out, any government ID was fine. Changing the wording doubled the flow completion rate.
Microcopy isn’t a detail. It’s the difference between momentum and exit.
7. Onboarding Drop-Offs That Hide in Plain Sight
We expect drop-off early in onboarding. But drop-off late? That’s the one that hurts.
A SaaS platform with a 7-step signup flow saw major churn between steps 6 and 7. Replay showed users were stuck waiting for a delayed validation message.
What the analytics showed as "bounce" was actually frustration with latency.
One backend update (and a progress bar) reduced abandonment by 29%.
8. Building a Friction-Finding Culture
Session replay isn’t just a tool. It’s a mindset.
Teams that build rituals around reviewing behavioral data see friction faster, fix smarter, and build better alignment between product, UX, and marketing.
Start with:
Weekly friction reviews
Replay clips embedded in support tickets
Celebrate friction fixes in sprint retros
Your users already showed you where things feel off. All you have to do is watch. Click here to see the COMPANION CONTENT STRATEGY.
Comments