7 holiday shopping frustrations and how to fix them

The busy holiday shopping season is well underway, but that doesn’t mean you can’t still improve your customers’ digital experiences. This time of year can be stressful, so creating seamless shopping journeys and reducing frustrating friction points will leave your customers delighted and ready to return.

Contentsquare recently surveyed over 600 US consumers about their online behaviors, attitudes and opinions when shopping during the holidays. The results shine a bright light on what matters most for consumers and what brands need to prioritize.

Below are the biggest pet peeves and digital experience frustrations, with UX tips to help you solve them.

1.Slow loading pages

Slow website loading time was the top pet peeve around online holiday shopping. The 2023 Digital Experience Benchmark found the same key learning—users are easily frustrated by slow-loading pages, causing them to bounce, abandon carts and never return.

However, this doesn’t have to be the case. To improve your site speed, consider minimizing characters (where appropriate) in your HTML, CSS and JS coding. For cookie banners, load them asynchronously so they don’t rely on the page rendering and ensure they’re responsive. As always, regularly monitor and optimize your Core Web Vitals metrics. (For more tips, see our guide, How to improve your website performance.)

2. Too many pop-ups

We’ve all experienced unwanted pop-ups. Whether it’s a CTA to subscribe to an email list, a discount announcement or any other type, they can negatively impact the user experience when done wrong. Many consumers are intent-led during holiday shopping, looking for specific items to purchase instead of casual browsing. Using pop-ups can slow down or completely stop their user journey, blocking them from completing their goal to purchase.

With this in mind, if you’re set on having a pop-up, ensure it’s quick loading and easy to exit out of or ignore. Use a high contrasting overlay to avoid confusion within the use journey. And again, ensure your site loads quickly to eliminate misclicks and unintentional redirects that can create confusion and frustration.

3. Item unavailability

There’s nothing more disappointing than finding an item you want and then learning it’s unavailable at checkout. Showing unavailable items or not properly marking low or out-of-stock items can quickly diminish consumer trust and trigger frustration.

On your product description pages (PDP) clearly tag items that are low stock or out of stock with bold and contrasting text. Clearly, indicating the number of that item in stock not only helps customers’ expectations but showing limited stock can trigger consumers into taking action faster than they normally would.

4. No quick-purchase checkout options

The payment experience is the last hurdle to conversion and arguably the most important—especially during busy seasons.

Offering a variety of quick one-click payment options like Shop Pay, PayPal, Google Pay, Apple Pay, and more can significantly reduce the amount of time it takes a user to complete an order. Instead of entering all their personal information in form fills, the one-click pay option adds convenience and reduces their chances of abandonment and friction.

5. Negative mobile experience

More consumers shop on mobile devices than any other. If a site has a complicated user interface (UI) or a confusing user journey, visitors will quickly abandon it. Consumers shop while standing in line, waiting for the train, between meetings and any time throughout the day when they have a few minutes to spare. If your digital experience can’t match expectations at that moment, you may lose that user for good.

A mobile-first strategy is not a quick fix but a long-term strategic shift. Start by simplifying your mobile user journeys by streamlining things like the navigation bar and above-the-fold homepage displays. (See our guide, How to optimize mobile experiences to drive growth).

6. Poor search results

It’s frustrating not being able to find what you’re looking for. Visitors who use your search bar are often more intent-driven and are more likely to convert. So, creating a seamless and intuitive search experience can boost your conversions and revenue.

Within your search bar, use categorized autocomplete to help users quickly find the items they are looking for in the correct product category. Bold non-keywords to ensure clarity and prevent misdirection in the user journey. On the search results page, limit the number of results per page to prevent confusion while keeping the search window visible at all times.

7. Promotion codes that don’t work

Broken promotion codes and unclear promo requirements quickly lead to frustration. It can often deter users from making a purchase at all.

To ensure a seamless experience with promotions and discount codes, clearly and concisely describe the parameters. However, it’s important not to overload the visitor with too much information at the beginning of their journey because it can cause confusion. Additionally, automate the application of a discount or promo code when connected to a specific item or cart value to reduce checkout steps.