Research: Consumer Mobile Frustration Is Rising – And It’s Costing Brands

July 15, 2025 at 08:00 AM EDT

ATLANTA, July 15, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Fullstory, a leading behavioral data company, today unveiled findings from its 2025 Behavioral Insights Benchmark Report, analyzing year-over-year trends in user digital experience across platforms. This year’s data from 14 billion sessions across key sectors—retail, financial services, food and beverage, travel and hospitality, gambling and entertainment, software, and business services—shows a sharp rise in mobile user frustration, with more frequent pain points, early search abandonment, spikes in error, and rage clicks.

Welcome to the ‘Frustration Economy’: Mobile is Becoming a Hotspot for User Friction 

Emerging AI-driven interfaces have made user experience (UX) on mobile more complex, and today’s consumers are paying the price, with mobile error clicks surging 667% from 2024 to 2025. This increase in errors, combined with decreasing user patience, is revealing a critical shift in behavior as consumers want their mobile experiences to be personalized and fast. A clear sign of frustration is rage clicks, which increased drastically for mobile and desktop users. Specifically, food and beverage rose a staggering 673%, followed by business services (131%), financial services (85%), and retail (56%).

Adding to the complexity, the report shows that mobile bounce rate rose 54%, with half of all mobile users exiting after just one page. Financial services saw the highest number of mobile bounce rates at 85%, followed by retail (64%), and food and beverage (13%). For travel brands, mobile bounce rates decreased by 10%.

“Today’s consumers expect elevated, efficient digital experiences. These high expectations are a byproduct of consumers’ increasing exposure to sophisticated AI tools, putting pressure on brands to deliver exceptional experiences every single session,” said Adam Spisak, Chief Customer Officer at Fullstory. “Our data confirms that mobile interfaces aren't keeping pace with the new set of expectations from consumers. This is a wake-up call for brands. As frustration builds and consumers encounter more issues, they will choose to pursue other options.”

Mobile Users Linger Longer but Struggle More

Across all sectors, mobile traffic is rising, but UX often lags. Errors, rage clicks, and abandonments are far more common on mobile, with users hitting dead ends in nearly every visit. Despite these challenges, mobile still presents opportunities, as brands seek to engage more often and for longer with consumers. In 2025, mobile session duration rose 332%, reaching an average of 15 minutes and 51 seconds (up from 3 minutes and 40 seconds in 2024). This opportunity to engage consumers for longer periods of time was most apparent for retailers, who saw a session duration increase of 442%, followed by food and beverage (156%), while entertainment saw a 14% decrease.

However, the report revealed dead clicks – when users click on elements that don’t respond – remained high on mobile, averaging 929 per 1,000 sessions – a slight increase from 2024. This is further proof that businesses need to invest in technology that tests their user interface on both desktop and mobile, improving both in tandem.

Desktop Experiences Are Stabilizing, Boosting User Confidence

While the increase in error clicks on mobile (667%) is concerning, this report found that web error clicks on desktop dropped significantly by 68%, indicating desktop stability is trending in the right direction. This shows that ongoing user experience investments on desktop experiences are paying off.

However, there are still opportunities for improvement, with error clicks increasing across several sectors. Food and beverage reported the highest rates of error clicks on desktop at 121%, followed by financial services (56%), and travel (14%).

“Behavioral data tells the story behind every customer interaction,” said Spisak, “It reveals exactly where and why users are struggling. The brands that act on these insights have a real opportunity to directly impact conversion, retention, and improve customer trust, resulting in stronger, more loyal relationships.”

To better understand users’ behaviors, expectations, and points of friction across digital experiences, read the full report here.

Research Methodology

The data in this report reflects aggregated and anonymized activity from January to December 2024, spanning 9.5 billion web sessions, 4.1 billion mobile sessions, and 945 billion individual events. It focuses on four key regions—North America, UK & Ireland, DACH, and Benelux—and highlights trends across five major industries: Retail, Travel & Hospitality, Food & Beverage, Finance, and Sports, Gambling & Entertainment.

About Fullstory

Fullstory is the leading behavioral data platform that helps technology leaders make smarter, faster decisions by integrating rich behavioral signals into their analytics stack. Its patented technology captures every digital interaction and transforms it into high-fidelity, actionable insights at scale. With agentic AI, Fullstory enables enterprises to anticipate the needs of both customers and employees, personalize experiences in real time, streamline workflows, and drive meaningful business outcomes. From boosting efficiency and conversion to increasing loyalty and revenue, Fullstory turns digital behavior into a competitive advantage. Headquartered in Atlanta with teams across North America, EMEA, and APAC, Fullstory is trusted by the world’s most innovative organizations to transform behavioral data into business impact.

Fullstory Media Relations
Alexandra King
Director of Communications
pr@fullstory.com

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Research: Consumer Mobile Frustration Is Rising – And It’s Costing Brands

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