The Human Edit: The Diddly Squat Effect

I am, at my core, a complete townie. Give me a city and a good coffee shop over a muddy field any day of the week. I have absolutely zero natural interest in tractors, sheep, or agriculture.

And yet, I am completely obsessed with Clarkson's Farm. I genuinely count down the days until the next series drops.

Because we live right here in the Cotswolds, Diddly Squat Farm and his new pub, The Farmer's Dog, are literally on our doorstep. So, this morning, I did something quite out of character - I set an alarm to try and book a table for lunch.

The reservations only open a month in advance, and I am not joking when I say it is harder than getting Taylor Swift tickets.

I sat there for 28 minutes straight, aggressively refreshing my browser. The website was a nightmare. It kept teasing me with availability, glitching, telling me to try again, forcing me to wait, and then kicking me out.

It was nearly half an hour of pure digital friction before I finally secured a table.

Is the food there going to be vastly superior to the gorgeous local pub down the road that I can book in three clicks? Probably not. Do I desperately need to eat a roast dinner there more than anywhere else? No. Am I going because I have a burning desire to spot someone off the telly? Also no (who am I kidding – maybe a quick selfie with Jeremy).

I didn't care about the terrible user experience. I didn't care about the wait. Because I wasn't trying to buy a plate of food - I wanted to step inside a story I've spent hours watching and caring about.

In marketing, we are obsessed with "frictionless journeys." We spend a fortune optimising websites, removing clicks, and streamlining the checkout process. We operate on the assumption that if a website glitches for three seconds, the customer gets annoyed and immediately bounces to a competitor.

But this morning, they made it incredibly hard work for me to give them my money, and I practically begged them to take it.

We put all this energy into making the transaction as slick and easy as possible. But maybe we're focusing on the wrong side of the equation entirely.

If your buying process broke tomorrow, would your prospects sit there and hit refresh for 28 minutes to get to you?

Be honest with yourself. You already know the answer. And instead of sitting with that answer and building the story that would change it, most of us spent last quarter A/B testing button colours and shortening the sign-up form.

The frictionless journey only matters when there's nothing else compelling people to stay. Fix the story first. Then optimise the checkout.