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The idea of intentionally adding friction to your product might sound like heresy. Shouldn’t every product experience feel effortless? Recently while researching assisted living options for my dad (ironically, on A Place for Mom), I stumbled onto a lead gen model that showed me the opposite: that making a sign-up process more challenging can actually be a boon.
And guess what? Apparently the model works so well that SeniorAdvisor.com, Seniorly, and likely many other assisted living and senior care facilities are using it. Far from shunning friction—these businesses are going out of their way to make it hard for people to sign up. Why?
The Art of the Intentional Hurdle
The cornerstone of A Place for Mom's (and both other companies’) strategy is a detailed quiz that precedes the lead form.
This does three things:
1. Qualifies the lead: It's not just about getting my email; it's about understanding my (i.e. the user's) needs. Asking specific questions (e.g., ‘When do you need to find care?’) gauges the urgency and relevance of my inquiry.
2. Clarifies benefits: I’m not just clicking choices; I’m being educated about the service. This step-by-step process builds a mental model of what A Place for Mom offers.
🩺 Irrational Labs designed an eligibility quiz for Tytocare, a virtual medical care kit, to build a mental model of who the product is for and what the options are. Anecdotally, TytoCare found that completers of the quiz were 66% more likely to purchase a TytoCare unit.
3. Increases my motivation: There’s friction, but my motivation has to be high enough to overcome it. This is the 3B’s in action (barriers, benefits, key behavior). By the time I hit ‘Submit’, I’m more committed than when I started.
Should You Add Friction to Your UX?
Lead gen methods aside: If friction is so powerful, should everyone be using it? Here are 3 three things to keep in mind:
💡 It’s about perceived friction, not just actual friction. Imagine a system where there are few steps (low logistical friction), but at first glance, it looks like a lot of effort (high psychological friction). In this case, it may make sense to decrease the psychological friction, even if it means increasing the logistical friction.
🔍 Use case: Split steps into multiple screens. For MasterClass, separating their email and credit card entry fields onto two different screens (requiring an extra click) substantially increased subscriptions. Why? Potentially because even though the number of steps increased, the perceived level of “ask” on each step was reduced.
💡 Friction can increase conversion by changing someone’s mental model.
🔍 Use case: Add relevant, easy-to-complete steps to your sign-up flow. Apartment List asks users their desired number of bedrooms, features, and price range. This increases friction, but also shows users the benefits they’ll receive if they complete the flow. This change in the perceived benefit alters the cost-benefit equation, resulting in many more users finding their new home.
💡 Friction slows users down, and sometimes that positively impacts their decision-making.
🔍 Use case: Lock features behind a sign-up. Secret Escapes ran an experiment to decide whether to let users see travel deals without first inputting email/password. In the first condition, users could close or skip the sign-up screen. In the second condition, sign-up was required and no skip option was offered. The second condition forced users to sign up. Can you guess the winner? Yep, the forced sign-up doubled sign-up rates—without causing negative reviews.
Fact or Friction?
Summing up, A Place for Mom's lead gen strategy is a reminder that in product design, as in life, the easiest path may not always be the most rewarding.
Sure, in most cases, friction prevents certain behaviors! But friction can also be good. For instance, Irrational Labs partnered with Prolific to test strategies to help people remember their prescription drug information. This included requiring people to complete a form for each prescription—making it harder to fill. Our ‘good friction’ strategy led to an 11% improvement in recall.
Some companies have found friction may be “good” if it 1) decreases the perception of costs 2) increases attention to future benefits, or 3) increases the likelihood of commitment.
Have you tested adding friction? What were the results? I want to know. 🤓
Until next week’s teardown, consider finding ‘A Place for Friction’ in your flow. 👋
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Questions about your product? Email kristen@irrationallabs.com.
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