Why adding friction to your website improves B2B sales optimisation

What happens when you wide open a dam? The water gushes in an uncontrolled way. Conversely, if you shut it down, the rivers below it disappear. It’s a tool people have been using to tame the element for 5000 years.

I like to think of friction in B2B sales optimisation as a dam. Too much of it dries your pipeline. Too little of it brings the lead quality to zero. The extremes won’t do your business any good. The sweet spot is somewhere in the middle.

In this article, we’ll explore ways of introducing friction to the user experience design on our B2B sales websites – to the benefit of the business and the customer. When you’re done reading, you’ll better understand the limits, best practices, and nuances.

In this article, we’ll explore ways of introducing friction to the user experience design on our B2B sales websites – to the benefit of the business and the customer. When you’re done reading, you’ll better understand the limits, best practices, and nuances.

The paradox of friction in user experience design

Introducing friction sounds counterintuitive. Conventional wisdom suggests designing seamless user experiences. Not sure what it means, though. I’d recommend completing the sentence as follows: “Design seamless user experiences – with the right amount of friction.”

Just like yin and yang, ease and friction need each other. Great user experience design doesn’t eliminate all effort. It provides thoughtful and purposeful boundaries that make the experience better.

We can see an influx of unqualified leads when we make it too easy. Our client had that problem. The new home page hero banner was tuned to the point where prospects were booking a demo right after seeing it. Sounds like a dream, but the sales team wasn’t having fun. I promise.

With that said, let’s circle back to the concept of intentional friction – a subtle but deliberate method that changes the focus from volume to value.

Defining intentional friction in user experience design

Most would think that friction can only be negative. We associate it with missed expectations, lack of attention to details, or just poor user experience design. I think it’s because we’re used to pushing for seamless and simple, so adding a touch of friction feels wrong. Accident or ignorance, no designer wakes up with the intention of ruining someone’s day. Let’s call this kind of friction unintentional.

We often forget that some of the most effective systems – like two-factor authentication or onboarding processes – work so well because they slow the user down, the right way. Here, friction is intentional and positive. It’s designed to make the B2B sales optimisation process more efficient by adding just the right amount of effort.

Remember, the goal isn’t to frustrate the user but to create checkpoints that benefit them and the business. Users get a curated, relevant experience and businesses avoid wasted resources. It’s a win-win.

Now that we know the basics, it’s time we look into the practical application of friction.

Adding friction to your website – practical application

Now that we know the basics, it’s time we look into the practical application of friction.

Improve lead quality for your sales team

I mentioned an example earlier. Our client attracted too many unqualified leads by making converting too easy. The user would land on the home page, click the primary call to action, and go straight to booking a demo with their sales team.

Single-touch point design leads to a flood of buyers who don’t fit into our customer groups or are uneducated about your product. Even if you decide to go for it, you can introduce friction with dynamic forms. For example, by adding qualifying questions to filter out irrelevant leads.

61% percent of B2B marketers send all leads directly to sales, but only 27% of them are actually qualified and sales-ready.

Lead qualification is number one priority for marketers. It’s the head of the pole. But other parts of the pole are as important in achieving that goal. So, let’s dive into them one by one.

Educate prospects about your product or service

Users who rush through your website won’t understand your offering. One indicator is a longer sales cycle, which you should measure in CRM. Adding friction in the form of education better prepares parties for a smooth negotiations or onboarding process.

If this doesn’t convince you, think about how you felt when someone or something didn’t meet your expectations. Frustration, helplessness, disappointment… We don’t want prospects to experience those emotions with our brand, do we?

You can implement educational checkpoints across the buyer’s journey. Short videos, screenshots, and FAQ sections go a long way. I wonder how it’d impact the quality of a lead if we required users to view a product demo before booking a call… Did someone test it?

Use friction to build trust and credibility

There’s one extra benefit that comes from slowing users down – especially at critical stages of their journey like the sign up form. I’m talking about giving reassurance, instilling trust and credibility.

It might sound controversial, but making people think is sometimes a good thing. When you introduce multi-step forms or confirmation prompts, you convey that your business values security and quality over speed.

I always say that B2B is all about trust-building. Our business website user experience design plays an important role in establishing trust and increasing the likelihood of a deal going forward. So use it well. But, please, don’t do what budget airlines do during the checkout. That’s the opposite of what I mean. Remember – there’s good and bad friction.

Increase the perceived value of your proposition

“Perceived” is the key here. That makes value subjective. Asking someone “is it worth it?” is equivalent to enquiring about the length of a piece of string. The fact is every prospect will use a mix of personal metrics to evaluate your proposition. Luckily, you can find common ones within a customer segment to design the experience.

We can use intentional friction to your advantage here. Processes that take a bit more time can create a perception of higher quality or exclusivity, especially in B2B contexts. Add customised onboarding experiences or steps like tailored recommendations.

Ever signed up to a SaaS product and got handheld on your first login? Some products have multiple use cases or inherent layers of complexity. Letting a new user roam free might result in them giving up. That’s bad.

Staying in the realm of websites, after users fill out a form, you can present a customised thank you page with resources that they might read.

Improve process efficiency and save team resources

Intentional friction benefits the customer and the business. It can prevent both users and sales teams from wasting time on irrelevant interactions.

Bad data wastes time and money. Research by SiliconANGLE shows that 75% of companies lose 14% of revenue to it. Sales teams often chase unqualified leads based on outdated or inaccurate information, instead of focusing on prospects with real potential.

This is where the progressive disclosure principle comes into play. You show users only what they need to see at the moment. It reduces the cognitive load and prevents overwhelm. But as they move through the process, you qualify them with extra prompts.

For example, you can show pricing information only after users tell you their business size. Or, you can limit your landing page features to those relevant.

Gradually ask users for commitment

Going back to the IKEA effect – a small amount of effort from the user can increase their sense of investment in the process. In other words, make it a priority to optimise the user engagement rate on your website.

Start with smaller tasks – using a pricing slider or opening an FAQ accordion. Gradually increase that engagement with new elements such as a video playback or a short form submission.

Generally speaking, the lower the stake and the easier the action is, the better. That’s especially important if you want new users to make an initial commitment to an activity you want them to engage in. An example of a low stake action is one in which you don’t ask for personal data. Plus. if users don’t have to submit a form to access content, that’s easy in my books.

If you really want to get nerdy about it, it’s called the principle of commitment and behavioural consistency. Go ahead and Google it, if you want!

Make waiting interesting

Waiting is probably the least favourite part of any experience. Agreed? Think of the dentist waiting room (sorry) or travelling on an underground train. There’s nothing to do. So advertisers put marketing collateral all over the place because they know we’ll see it.

In the online world, we get bored, too. But waiting also creates doubt. “Is it still loading?” will be the first question the user asks. “Should I refresh?” will follow. That’s unnecessary, unpleasant, and frankly, a wasted opportunity from the business point of view.

Whether we talk about the wait before a booked meeting, a call back, or a flight search results, we can make the most out of it. Rest assured, just because the user understands why they have to wait, they certainly don’t appreciate it.

While the users wait, engage them with loading animations, progress bars, success stories, or other educating snippets. Not necessarily a B2B space, but here’s how Skyscanner puts their users at ease after you search for a flight:

Addons like this create a sense of time investment, leverage the loss aversion, and work off the sunk fallacy bias. There’s an overlap with the previous principle, too. Users are more likely to stay engaged if they feel their time is being valued during longer processes.

Slow them down to prevent errors

I heard from a client, “I’m always scared that if we rush things, we will miss important information.” He’s right. At a certain speed, we lose the detail. But there’s sprinting, marching, with jogging in between. It’s all about controlling the pace based on the constraints and objectives.

I mentioned before that letting users glaze through the journey wasn’t the best idea. Our strongest argument has been the quality of a lead. But there’s more to it.

You can double check with the user if they want to proceed with the action that holds severe consequences. You can set expectations to anticipate errors inside a sign up form. Plus, you can save yourself some admin work by preventing accidental transactions.

How to strike a balance with friction

Our client’s experience illustrates a key truth: friction, when used thoughtfully, can filter out low-value interactions while enhancing the quality of engagement.

We stumbled upon this concept with a client whose user wouldn’t even scroll through the page to educate themselves. They’d just convert from the hero banner on the home page. Everyone’s dream, right? Not so much.

Reducing the buyer’s journey to a single touch point wasn’t a good idea. Since the traffic quality was all over the place, many unqualified leads were getting through to CRM – wasting sales resources.

To fix the problem we worked on increasing the scroll depth and adding educational steps such as calculators, testimonial videos, or success stories. As a result we hit 81.67% more sales page visits, 10.61% more pricing page visits, and 3.97% more sign up page visits.

When intentional friction won‘t work

If your only metric of success is conversion rate, don’t add any friction. I promise you will see a drop in the number of leads coming through to your CRM and you might make the sales team mad in the process.

There’s a saying, “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.” It’s better to hold onto something small and certain than to chase something larger and uncertain.

If you believe in the “quality over quantity” philosophy, you’ll find intentional friction a powerful tool for the job. In B2B, when we rely so much on human relationships, I believe finding the right people to work with should be high on the priority list.

Michael Aagaard at Unbounce told a surprising story at a CTA Conference. He shortened a client’s form by three fields which resulted in a 14% drop in conversions. Later he opted in to make the form field labels longer and descriptive, which increased conversions by 19.2%.

If your team isn’t there and you still want to try introducing friction, I’ll recommend communicating what you’re about to do and what it’ll mean for them. No one wants to see unexpected dips in their MQLs chart.

Conclusion

Hopefully, you now understand the importance of striking the right balance with friction. It can be a powerful tool in the hands of an experienced web designer. But also, a big bottleneck if mishandled.

Don’t get me wrong. This isn’t a remedy for a broken conversion funnel. It won’t fix your product market fit or pricing strategy. Think of intentional friction as an extra lever that you can pull to move the needle.

The best starting point is to zoom out and look at your entire conversion funnel. You want to analyse the user experience from the first touch point all the way to closing a deal. Keep an eye for underperforming parts. Could you use any of the practices from this article to mend them? If yes, it’s definitely worth a try.