Contentsquare’s 2025 report highlights the rise in customer frustration and friction, impacting conversion rates despite higher digital ad spend and increased reliance on paid channels.
As companies navigate a highly competitive landscape defined by rising customer expectations and the rapid evolution of AI-powered technologies, new data from Contentsquare’s 2025 Digital Experience Benchmarks released today suggests that turning traffic into conversions is a growing challenge across industries.
The report, which analyzed 2024 online experience data, found that brands spent 13.2% more on digital ad spend last year, yet the increased investment has not translated into better results. This year’s annual report, which analyzed over 90 billion user sessions across 6,000 websites, found that the cost of an online visit surged 9% this year, amounting to a 19% increase within the past two years, while conversion rates have dropped 6.1% year-over-year. The culprit? A perfect storm of declining organic traffic, increased dependence on paid channels (especially paid social), and, most crucially, the challenge of meeting customers’ growing demands for faultless interactions.
The report reveals that in 2024, 40% of all online visits were plagued by user frustration, leading to abandoned sessions and lost customers. While frustration decreased slightly compared to last year (-1.8%), it remains a trend that is likely to persist unless actively addressed. Slow-loading content was a key contributor to bounces, causing 53% of users to exit after viewing just a single page. Seventy three percent of consumers cited poor customer experience (CX) as the primary reason they would avoid purchasing from a company. In a market saturated with alternatives, digital friction is becoming increasingly costly.
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“In 2025, almost half of online visits will continue to suffer from preventable friction, which is, at best, cutting journeys short, and at worst, driving customers away entirely,” said Jean-Christophe Pitié, Chief Marketing and Partnerships Officer of Contentsquare. “Relying on paid channels to drive traffic without addressing the customer journey is a short-term fix. The true value lies in nurturing online experiences that are frictionless, engaging, and that keep customers coming back.”
Paid channels accounted for 39% of all digital traffic analyzed by Contentsquare in 2024, up from 37% in 2023, while paid social media drove a remarkable 12% spike in traffic. Businesses that increased reliance on paid social saw higher bounce rates (+9.2%), fewer page views (-8.7%), and lower conversions (-10.6%), underscoring a crucial point: realizing the full potential of paid traffic requires an equal focus on crafting frictionless customer journeys.
Amidst these challenges, a cohort of “digitally disciplined” organizations[1] — those actively monitoring and managing digital experience performance — are showing the way forward. These leaders:
- Decreased load time frustration by 22%
- Minimized rage clicks by nearly 5%
- Reduced friction 4.5x more effectively than their peers
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Similarly, websites that increased session depth (or the number of pages viewed) by 10% or more saw an average 5.4% conversion boost.
“Digital experience has transcended marketing to become a core business imperative, and as our data shows, it now directly impacts the bottom line,” continued Pitié. “In 2025 and the years ahead, and with advancements in AI and how users interact online, we expect to see a widening gulf between organizations that prioritize experience vs. those that don’t. With acquisition costs soaring and consumer patience waning, companies that will thrive will be those that make understanding and optimizing every customer interaction a fundamental part of their business strategy moving forward.”
