How micro-frictions are killing your B2B conversion

Micro-frictions are killing your B2B conversion

There's a saboteur at work in your company. It operates 24/7 with a single goal: to discourage warm leads (in plain English: potential Clients) from contacting you. Its actions are costing you real money.

The saboteur is your contact form, and it's good at its job. Its average effectiveness? 60% form abandonment rate. Do the math: that's 60% of a client inquiry's value. You're losing it every single day!

This saboteur's main weapon is something called micro-frictions. Micro-frictions are small (okay, sometimes bigger) obstacles that, when combined, effectively discourage a B2B decision-maker from submitting the form.

Let's picture this. Your future client begins the process of contacting you with a certain level of enthusiasm, big or small. They're already almost convinced; they've seen your ads, attended a webinar, etc. But finalizing the contact (or purchase) is a delicate process. Someone is deciding right then and there whether to invest their time and money. What happens when we start making this process difficult for them?

Your potential client will give up when the sum of obstacles they encounter in the process, even seemingly small ones, exceeds the strength of their purchase intent (a.k.a. how "warm" the lead is).

Remember, in the B2B world, time is a currency, and a purchase is driven by an assessment of the value you'll deliver versus the risk of cooperation. Every point of friction at this stage is evaluated by the buyer as a waste of their time and resources. It's a simple projection in the client's eyes. If this first process isn't smooth, the entire future collaboration could be just as bumpy.

To sum up:

You've spent money on marketing and ads.
You've dedicated time to writing posts, hosting webinars, and attending trade shows.
You've managed to attract someone who is motivated (to some degree) to make a purchase.

And at this critical moment, your warm lead encounters an unprofessional, complicated form. How do they interpret this? That any future collaboration will be just as difficult. This one brief touchpoint is enough for them to abandon the form and check out your competitor's offer. If that competitor makes a better first impression, you've lost a deal worth thousands or more.

So, the problem is clear. How can you check if your form and process are free of such micro-frictions? Of course, the best possible solution is to install FormDIG, but before you get to that, here are the most serious ones:

Types of micro-frictions in B2B:

Breach of Trust. The moment a user feels deceived because the form imposes conditions that weren't mentioned when they started filling it out. Example: requiring a credit card number when registering for a free trial.

In forms that breach trust, we observe an abandonment rate of up to 94%. An additional side effect is usually the complete cooling of the lead.
Process Friction. The form is too long, has too many steps, is illogical, or doesn't guide the user down the right path. The user feels like they are wasting time. Example: no real-time validation of fields; the client is only informed of errors when they try to submit and has to "go back" in the process.

FormDIG analytics indicate that 48% of form abandonments are caused by process friction.
Operational Barrier. A "wall" that the user cannot get past. This happens when the form doesn't offer options that comply with company policies (e.g., no deferred payment option, mandatory phone number when the user doesn't have a company phone).

FormDIG analyzes abandoned fields. According to our data, fields that pose a potential barrier are responsible for 23% of abandonments.
Unnecessary Effort. Forcing the user to do work that is disproportionate to the goal (e.g., providing a website address, answering a question about how they heard about the company).

Forms that impose additional conditions are abandoned 11% more often. When completing a required field involves switching between the form and another program, this rate increases to 18%.
Privacy Concerns. The form requests data or consent that is inappropriate for the purpose of filling it out (e.g., consent for marketing activities on a complaint form).

A form containing such clauses will be abandoned 7% more often. We see a steadily growing awareness of data protection in this area.

Each of these areas will be described in more detail in future articles. Want to know what traps are lurking in your form? Write to us: contact@formdig.com

Have a great day!

Marcin Przybyla