The Facebook Payments team was testing ways to improve conversion. Someone suggested adding a zip code request to the flow. Surprisingly, this increased conversion, even though it added friction for users. Why? The zip code validation created a sense of safety. The extra step in the flow improved the way users viewed the experience.
Something similar happened with peer-to-peer payments. We wanted to increase the number of people paying, but we were unsure what to try to make it happen. We eventually decided to add an interstitial page to the flow explaining the security and privacy of the feature. Again, to our surprise, the number of total transactions and payers went up due to the increased sense of safety.
There had been two schools of thought on this. One group wanted to focus on making payments as frictionless as possible. The other group wanted to make sure that the product was understandable and believed that adding more friction would ensure people knew what was going on. It turned out that the latter group was correct: More friction equaled more transactions.
We often assume that friction is a bad thing. Earlier this week, I even told you that having unnecessary friction in your life could negatively impact it.
But what if I told you that friction—the good kind of friction—could also make your life better?
Adding positive friction to the things you regularly do can be a benefit to you, but only if you are aware of it and thoughtful about how you integrate it. By strategically incorporating good friction into your life, you can discourage negative choices and move toward better outcomes.
Friction as a benefit
There’s a lot of friction in going to the gym, but (probably) very little friction in grabbing a snack from the table or turning on the TV. What if it was the other way around? What if it was easier to jump on your exercise machine than to turn on the TV and snack?
How making yourself do a bit of extra work can be to your benefitRead MorePerspectives
