Frictionless DACH Benchmark · 20 stores audited · live data

The State of E-Commerce Friction

Behavioral economics benchmarks from a research audit of 20 German-speaking e-commerce stores. Where the average store fails psychologically, which friction patterns are most common, and how your store compares. Methodology grounded in Kahneman, Cialdini, and Baymard research.

Sample size: N = 20

Methodology: 7 friction categories · 23+ patterns

Updated: live

Methodology note. The Frictionless DACH Benchmark is built from automated friction analysis of public-facing pages of e-commerce stores in the German-speaking market — major direct-to-consumer brands and mid-tier shops. Each store contributes one data point (its most recent scan); duplicate scans of the same store are not double-counted. The dataset grows continuously as more stores are added to the research and as users initiate their own scans via frictionlessai.net. All benchmarks are reported in aggregate; individual store scores are not published.

Section 01 · Score Distribution

Where do most stores fall?

Frictionless Score from 0 to 100 across all 20 scanned stores. Higher is better. Most stores cluster between Critical and Poor — meaning they leave significant conversion on the table.

Average Score

54.3

across 20 stores

Median Score

57.0

50th percentile

Top 10% (P90)

68.1

healthy stores threshold

Bottom 10% (P10)

42.8

critical-friction stores

Critical (0-24)

2 (10.0%)

Poor (25-49)

4 (20.0%)

Fair (50-74)

14 (70.0%)

Good (75-100)

0 (0.0%)

Section 02 · Friction Category Prevalence

Which psychological frictions are most common?

Across the 20 stores in the dataset, this is the percentage where each WHY category was detected as a HIGH or CRITICAL friction. Trust signals and decision clarity are the most consistently absent.

Friction Anxiety

15.0%

0 critical 3 high 70.0% any-severity

Urgency Absence

15.0%

0 critical 3 high 65.0% any-severity

Decision Paralysis

10.0%

0 critical 2 high 70.0% any-severity

Value Ambiguity

10.0%

0 critical 2 high 65.0% any-severity

Trust Deficit

5.0%

0 critical 1 high 70.0% any-severity

Price Resistance

5.0%

0 critical 1 high 65.0% any-severity

Mobile Friction

0.0%

0 critical 0 high 65.0% any-severity

Section 03 · Top Friction Patterns

The 15 most common friction patterns

Specific patterns Frictionless detects most often, ranked by prevalence across the 20 stores in the dataset. Each maps to a behavioral mechanism with documented research basis.

Pattern

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