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How to Find and Fix Friction in the Buying Journey

Customers rarely decide not to buy for one dramatic reason. More often, small difficulties build up: a confusing product page, unclear pricing, a slow reply, an awkward form, conflicting information or a delivery promise that feels uncertain. Each issue may appear minor in isolation. Together, they create enough effort or doubt for the customer to pause, leave or choose a competitor.

This is friction in the buying journey. It is any unnecessary effort, uncertainty or obstacle that makes it harder for a customer to move from interest to action.

Business team reviewing a customer journey map with touchpoints, warning symbols and improvement actions.

Finding friction is not about making every customer journey shorter. Some purchases need detailed information, comparison and human reassurance. The objective is to make each step feel clear, relevant and proportionate to the customer’s needs and level of risk.

Customer journey maps help teams see the experience as the customer sees it: across channels, over time and beyond one internal department. Nielsen Norman Group describes journey maps as a way to combine storytelling and visualisation so that teams can better understand and address customer needs.[1]

What does friction in the buying journey look like?

Friction can be practical, emotional or informational.

Practical friction includes slow-loading pages, unsuitable payment methods, inconvenient opening hours, repeated form fields or difficult returns.
Informational friction includes vague pricing, missing specifications, inconsistent messages, unclear eligibility or policies that are difficult to find.
Emotional friction includes anxiety about making the wrong choice, feeling pressured, uncertainty about support or the sense that a business will be difficult to deal with if something goes wrong.

These forms of friction often interact. A customer may be able to complete a form technically, but abandon because the information requested feels intrusive or because they do not understand why it is needed. A service may be competitively priced, but still feel poor value if booking is difficult and support appears unreliable.

The customer needs, value and satisfaction framework is useful here. Customers judge value against not only price, but also time, effort, uncertainty and inconvenience.

Start with one real customer goal

The most common journey-mapping mistake is trying to map every customer and every possible interaction at once. The result is usually a large diagram that describes the organisation but does not help anyone decide what to improve.

Instead, choose one defined customer, one goal and one situation.

For example:

a first-time buyer choosing a high-value product;
a small business owner requesting a service quotation;
a returning customer trying to amend a booking; or
a learner comparing online qualifications before enrolling.

Be specific about the journey’s start and end. A useful scope might begin when the customer searches for a solution and end when they have successfully purchased and know what happens next. Government service-design guidance similarly recommends mapping the whole problem, including the people and organisations involved in delivering the journey.[2]

Map the buying journey in five stages

Most buying journeys can be organised around five broad stages. The exact labels can change to suit the sector, but the customer questions remain useful.

Stage	Customer question	Likely friction	Evidence to review
1. Recognise a need	What problem am I trying to solve?	Marketing attracts the wrong audience or fails to explain the problem solved.	Search terms, enquiries, sales conversations, social comments.
2. Explore options	Which solutions are credible and suitable?	Poor navigation, vague information, missing proof, inaccessible content.	Page journeys, search behaviour, bounce points, user feedback.
3. Compare and decide	Is this worth the price, effort and risk?	Unclear total cost, weak reviews, inconsistent claims, unanswered questions.	FAQs, competitor comparison, support contacts, abandoned baskets or forms.
4. Buy or enquire	Can I complete this easily and safely?	Long forms, payment failure, forced account creation, unclear next steps.	Conversion data, error reports, usability testing, contact reasons.
5. Receive and continue	Did the organisation deliver what it promised?	Delays, weak onboarding, hard-to-access support, difficult returns or renewal.	Complaints, reviews, cancellations, repeat purchase and retention data.

This map is not the finished analysis. It is the structure for asking better questions. At every stage, teams should capture what the customer is trying to achieve, what they need to know, what they feel, what channels they use and where they may have to work harder than necessary.

Use evidence, not internal assumptions

Internal teams often know their processes well enough to stop noticing their weaknesses. A dropdown menu may make sense to the people who designed it. A policy may appear clear to a team that already understands it. The customer has no such advantage.

Journey mapping is strongest when it combines several forms of evidence:

web or app analytics showing where people leave or repeat actions;
calls, emails and live-chat queries that reveal confusion;
sales-team notes about common objections;
complaints, reviews, returns and cancellation reasons;
customer interviews and usability sessions; and
frontline observations from staff who see customers struggle in real time.

Numbers can reveal where friction is happening, but they rarely explain it fully. A sharp drop at a pricing page might indicate that the price is too high, but it could also indicate unclear value, unexpected costs, missing finance options or uncertainty about the service included. Direct research—particularly interviews and observation—helps test these competing explanations.[3]

Look for the moments that change behaviour

Not every inconvenience deserves equal investment. Focus first on friction that affects an important customer decision, appears repeatedly or has a disproportionate impact on trust.

Three signs deserve particular attention:

Customers keep asking the same question

Repeated questions about cost, delivery, eligibility, compatibility or cancellation are rarely only a support issue. They often show that vital information is absent, hard to find or difficult to understand earlier in the journey.

Customers change channel to get reassurance

A customer who starts online but phones before buying may be seeking human confirmation. That is not automatically a problem; complex purchases may genuinely benefit from conversation. It becomes a concern when the channel change is caused by unclear information or a process that cannot be completed confidently online.

Customers abandon after a promise has been made

If a business advertises speed, simplicity or personal support, the buying journey must make that promise believable. When the customer meets long waits, confusing steps or a lack of ownership, the issue is not only conversion. It is a gap between the brand message and reality.

The marketing mix is helpful here because it reminds teams that product, price, place, promotion, people, process and physical evidence must work together.

A practical friction-priority test

Once a team has identified several pain points, this short test helps decide what to tackle first.

Score each issue from 1 to 5 against these four questions:

Frequency: How often does it affect customers?
Impact: How much does it influence purchase, retention or trust?
Evidence: How strong is the evidence that this is the real cause?
Fixability: Can the organisation improve it within a realistic time and budget?

High-scoring issues should be tested first. A simple improvement can have significant value when it removes a recurring barrier at a critical moment. Examples include making delivery costs visible earlier, rewriting an unclear eligibility rule, adding an answer to a common question or simplifying a form.

This is more useful than prioritising the loudest complaint or the most visually obvious redesign idea. The best next action is usually the one that reduces meaningful customer effort while supporting a clear commercial outcome.

Test improvements before assuming they work

An improvement should be treated as a hypothesis, not a guaranteed success. For example:

If the business shows total costs and delivery information on the product page, customers will have fewer unanswered questions and more will continue to checkout.

The organisation can then test the change with a limited audience, compare relevant behaviour before and after, and gather customer feedback. The purpose is not to chase one headline conversion figure. It is to understand whether the change genuinely helped customers make an informed decision.

This is especially important where changes involve trade-offs. Reducing steps may make a form faster, but could remove information that is genuinely needed to provide a suitable service. Adding more reassurance may improve confidence, but could overwhelm customers if it makes the page harder to scan.

Connect friction with the full customer relationship

The buying journey does not end with payment or an enquiry form. Delivery, onboarding, support, returns and recovery all influence whether a customer feels they made the right choice. Teams should therefore map the whole relationship rather than treating conversion as the final measure of success.

When a failure occurs, the response becomes part of the journey too. Clear ownership, honest communication and a fair solution can protect trust. They cannot, however, replace the need to remove repeatable causes of friction at source.

Develop practical customer-insight and marketing skills

Improving a buying journey requires the ability to understand customers, use evidence, coordinate departments and turn insight into practical changes.

Click College offers flexible online Marketing Management routes for learners who want to build these skills:

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Explore the Marketing Management course pathways and choose the route that matches your experience and goals.

Frequently asked questions

What is friction in the buying journey?

Friction is any unnecessary effort, uncertainty or obstacle that makes it harder for a customer to progress towards a purchase or enquiry. It can be practical, such as a long form, informational, such as unclear pricing, or emotional, such as a lack of trust.

What should a customer journey map include?

A useful map includes a defined customer and goal, the stages of the journey, customer actions and questions, channels and touchpoints, emotional or practical pain points, supporting evidence and prioritised improvement actions.

How do I find customer-journey pain points?

Combine behavioural data, customer feedback, support contacts, complaints, reviews and direct observation. Look for repeated questions, drop-off points, unnecessary channel switching and gaps between what the business promises and what customers experience.

Does every business need a customer journey map?

Most businesses can benefit from mapping at least one important journey. It is particularly useful when conversion is weak, complaints repeat, customers struggle across channels or teams disagree about what customers need.

Key takeaway

Friction in the buying journey is rarely a single broken step. It is the combined effect of effort, uncertainty and inconsistent experiences that make a customer less confident about continuing. By mapping one defined journey, grounding decisions in evidence and improving the highest-impact barriers first, businesses can make it easier for customers to choose and stay.

References

[1] Nielsen Norman Group, When and How to Create Customer Journey Maps

[2] GOV.UK Service Manual, Map and Understand a User’s Whole Problem

[3] Nielsen Norman Group, How to Conduct Research for Customer Journey Mapping

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