I’ve spent a long time building webshops, and for years I thought it was all about features and removing friction to improve conversion funnels.
I thought that if a shop didn’t do well, we could always get it back on track by researching, improving, and measuring. The process is repeated forever, and the business grows.
One day I went to check the time my local coffee shop opens and learned they have a webshop. I went to order coffee immediately and was unpleasantly surprised that the Add to Cart button is just a mailto link.
Not even a form with prefilled data about the product I clicked, just a link!
They wanted me to write an email, wait for them to send me an invoice, and ship the coffee after I paid.
The amount of friction and unnecessary steps seemed insane.
But I was lazy to walk, so I went through the “Checkout”. We exchanged a few emails, I paid, they confirmed, and shipped.
The next morning around 8 am there was a delivery on my door, freshly roasted coffee.
I still do it every month, except that now, I go back to the email thread, just say The same please, and they reply, We shipped it. Here is the invoice, pay when you get a chance.
That’s a frictionless experience! It’s the best webshop I’ve ever used.