Buyer Friction is Killing Your Momentum

Just as friction leads to a lack of momentum with physical motion, a similar law of motion exists in startup growth.

Our job, especially before significant momentum picks up, is to remove as much friction as possible from the customer journey and transfer friction points in the buying process from the customer to you. You’ve probably heard the Paul Graham phrase, “do things that don’t scale.” This is how you put it into practice. We’ve all heard the story of the early Airbnb days when the founders realized that taking pictures of Airbnb residences was a friction point, and they took on the photography task internally. 

Friction creates a reason not to buy. And guess what? Give someone a reason not to buy now, and they won’t. Too much friction leads to less momentum, which leads to no customers. What are some friction points to watch out for?

Objections as Points of Friction

Friction starts from the beginning of the decision-making process and shows up as objections. Your job is to anticipate as many points of objections as possible and create answers or solutions to those objections in a way that makes the buying journey seem frictionless. 

Reasoning from the customer’s perspective, list as many objections as possible. Objection listing and handling is an important exercise. You will play the way you practice. Be as detailed as possible – and for each objection, find a response or solution. Start this exercise before you talk to customers, and keep refining your objection list as you engage with your buyer.

Friction During Signup Flow

During the signup process, consider every information request from you a point of friction. Go through each interaction you’ve built and label each action as a green light, yellow or red light. If it is critical to delivering value to your customer, and they absolutely cannot finish the signup process without this interaction, label it green. If it’s essential but can be handled post initial signup or usage, label it yellow. If it’s just critical for security or other reasons, label it yellow. If it adds no value or it’s only valuable to you, e.g., marketing or segmentation questions; label it red. Now try to remove as much of the yellow and red as possible. 

Onboarding Friction

Other common friction points are onboarding, transferring data, onboarding and adding new users, if many, and so on. With an MVP, it’s unlikely that these processes will operate entirely smoothly. Eventually, you should aim to improve the processes with product solutions. For example, if transferring data is a friction point, you may eventually build an importing tool for your product. One key friction point for TheraNest was data transfer or import. So we took on the import and data transfer process internally until we built import tools. 

Pricing Friction

If you constantly hear from most of your target customers that price is a serious point of friction, see if going down on price, or better, creating a lower pricing entry point will reduce friction. This doesn’t mean always going for the low price. Pricing has to match the level of value and differentiation, so revisit your validated range of willingness to pay and make a call. 

Friction Removal Is a Differentiator 

As you remove buying and usage friction, use it to frame your messaging. Where possible, express how you eliminate buying and usage friction in your messaging. Your customer always wants the most value for the least work. Ease is a significant factor that influences buying. Customers want the guarantee of a pleasant outcome for less work input. 

As you scale, you can introduce some relative friction in a way that doesn’t diminish your product value. Your momentum and reputation are a tailwind now. The customer is happy to tell you a few things during the signup process. They are ok using your import tool versus you having to do it. Your product is maturing and has some input value the prospect is excited about or knows you're the ideal solution. 

Momentum doesn’t mean you should ever stop obsessing over friction. The lack of obsession is how large companies get displaced. No matter how much momentum you have, just as in the real world, there is a point of friction that will slow down and eventually kill your motion.