Friction
Friction is where your product fights people. Every night ClickClacks looks through the last seven days of events for rage clicks, dead clicks and abandoned retries, and lists what it finds, ranked by how many people it hits. There is nothing to set up.
Updated
When to use it
- A weekly look at what is annoying people, before they tell you.
- Conversion dipped and you want to know if something broke.
- After a release, to check nothing new is fighting back.
What we look for
| Finding | Rule, within one session | Reads like |
|---|---|---|
| Rage click | 5 or more clicks on the same element and page within 10 seconds. | People are rage-clicking “Apply coupon” on /checkout |
| Dead click | 3 or more clicks on an element with nothing else happening for 30 seconds. | “Download invoice” does not respond on /billing |
| Abandoned retry | The same custom event fires 3 or more times, and the session ends within 60 seconds of the third. | People retry “Upload file” before leaving /import |
A pattern becomes a finding once at least 25 different people hit it in seven days. Anything smaller is treated as noise. A session ends after 30 minutes without activity. Detection runs once a day, across all your sources, up to the end of yesterday in your project’s time zone.
Clicks come from autocapture, so rage and dead clicks need no setup. Abandoned retries watch your own events, such as Upload file.
Happening, Stopped, Muted
Findings are observed, never assigned. Nobody owns them, there is no badge to clear, and nothing is ticked off. A finding closes when we stop seeing it.
- Happening: seen recently. The status says New, Steady, or Getting worse when people affected rose 20% or more since the last run.
- Stopped: nothing seen for three days. It moves here by itself, and it comes back if it returns.
- Muted: someone chose to set it aside. See Muting.
Each tab shows a count. Each row shows the finding, its page and element, when it was first noticed, a sparkline, and how many people it hit.
Reading a finding
Open a finding to see:
- Finding at a glance: people affected in 7 days, their share of everyone with this pattern on the page, people hit each day, and what they did next.
- What we saw: counted events only, with no guessing, and where those people went next. View related events in Events opens the matching events.
- What we think it is: a likely cause with High, Medium or Low confidence, and What to try. For a rage click, for example, the suggestion is to make the first click acknowledge straight away.
- Ask about this: the Friction investigator, for follow-up questions.
Set up an experiment for this fix starts a new experiment named after the finding.
Muting
Mute is the only manual action. Click Mute on a finding and choose how long:
- Until it stops happening (the default): stays muted while it goes on. If it stops and later starts again, that counts as new and it comes back.
- For 30 days: comes back after 30 days if it is still happening.
- Forever: stays under Muted. You can unmute it there at any time.
Muting applies to everyone in the project, not only you. We keep watching either way, and muting never marks anything as fixed. You can undo from the toast.
Measuring a fix
Every finding has a Measure the fix panel. Click Link an outcome and choose one:
- Before and after a funnel: pick a saved funnel and two windows of up to 90 days each. By default, Before is 14 to 8 days ago and After is the last 7 days. You get Before, After and the change in points. It is an observation, not proof that the fix caused it.
- Existing A/B experiment: link an experiment and read its results here. Linking doesn’t change or deploy anything.
Under What changed around then, add a dated Project annotation, such as Released faster signup. Annotations also appear on line tiles on your boards.
Tips and gotchas
- A new project needs about a week of events before findings can be told apart from noise.
- Evidence covers the last 7 days across all sources for a happening finding. A stopped finding shows its recorded history.
- See it on the page. Each heatmap has a Friction tab that places findings on the screenshot.
- Want to hear about new friction? Friction doesn’t email. Check it weekly, or put related numbers on an alert.
Recipes
Rage-click triage in ten minutes.
- Open Friction on the Happening tab. Start with anything marked Getting worse, then the most people affected.
- Open the finding and read What we saw. Did most people give up afterwards, or continue elsewhere in the session?
- Check What we think it is and its confidence.
- Either fix it and click Link an outcome to measure the fix, or Mute it if it is expected, such as a game where fast clicking is the point.
Did our fix for the checkout dead click work?
- Open the finding and click Link an outcome.
- Choose Before and after a funnel and pick your checkout funnel.
- Set Before to the week before the release and After to the week after, then Save outcome link.