Your 2025 guide to digital experience

A significant shift is rippling through the digital world, making waves for every brand. Forget “business as usual”; we’re seeing a fundamental transformation. 

With organizations spending a staggering +13.2% more on digital ads in 2024 alone, you’d expect a boom in website visitors. Instead, traffic across all industries fell by -3.3% year-on-year. 

 This means the cost of a single visit has soared by +9% in just one year, compounding to a daunting +19% increase over the past two years.

In this environment, every click, scroll, and moment on your site is more valuable than ever. Digital teams are under pressure to maximize impact, but many common solutions often miss a critical underlying issue: customer frustration. Even with efforts to improve, 40% of user sessions are still plagued by frustration, directly impacting engagement and the potential of those hard-won visits.

Our partner, ContentSquare’s latest 2025 Digital Experience Benchmarks Insights Report cuts through the noise. Drawing on a massive dataset of 90 billion sessions and 389 billion page views across 6,000 global websites, this report is your definitive guide. 

It examines the entire customer journey, from initial acquisition to long-term retention, revealing how to transform challenges into triumphs. Get ready to discover the actionable insights that will help digital leaders like you optimize experiences and maximize the value of every single visit this year.

What is the digital experience? 

So, what exactly is the digital experience, and why does it matter more than ever today? Simply put, every interaction your brand has with customers across digital touchpoints: your website, mobile apps, social media, and beyond. But it’s far more than just technology. It’s about crafting a smooth, intuitive, and delightful journey for your users, ensuring every click, swipe, and tap enhances their satisfaction and guides them seamlessly toward their goals.

While customer experience (CX) covers every online and offline interaction, digital experience management (DXM) zeroes in on the online realm. It’s your opportunity to build a powerful connection where your brand lives most visibly for many customers.

 In a world where visit costs are up by +9%, and consumption is falling, investing in a positive digital experience isn’t just a nice-to-have; it’s crucial for driving loyalty, boosting conversions, and protecting your brand.

Digital experience key trends for 2025

What’s truly happening out there in the customer journey? What are the big takeaways for brands looking to connect better and drive real results? Let’s dive into some key shifts we’re seeing:

1. Frustration

Imagine a customer eager to browse your site, ready to explore. Then, boom — they hit an invisible wall of frustration. It’s not just a minor annoyance; these moments hinder their experience, making them leave sooner and engage less. 

The stark reality? A significant 40% of all user sessions still encounter some form of frustration. Notably, it is – 2% down from last year.  It leads to more bounces and shorter sessions, ultimately resulting in – 6% downfall in page views

So, what exactly is this “frustration” we’re talking about? It’s those irritating hiccups that throw a wrench in someone’s time on your site, like:

• JavaScript error breaking something during their visit.
• Slow page load, where the page takes longer than three seconds to appear.
• Rage click where a user clicks an element three times in under two seconds.
• Repeatedly clicking the same button or field multiple times.
• Multiple use target where they keep clicking an element that isn’t responding.
• Even low page activity, meaning they aren’t interacting at all.

Innovative teams, called “digitally disciplined,” are actively fighting against this. They’ve proven that consistent monitoring can remove 4.5x more frustration, reducing issues like slow load times and rage clicks. Ultimately, clearing these roadblocks isn’t just about good manners; it’s about making every valuable visit count.

2. Traffic

You might feel like getting people to your site is more challenging than ever, and you’re not wrong. Across all industries, overall website traffic fell by -3.3% year-on-year. This dip isn’t just a random occurrence; it’s a symptom of a significant change in how brands attract visitors. 

We’re seeing a clear move away from traditional channels. Owned and organic sources like direct visits, email, and organic search collectively declined by -5.7%.

Meanwhile, paid traffic sources are stepping up, now delivering 39% of all visits, a bump from 37% last year. This means more brands are leaning into paid advertising, with paid traffic itself seeing a modest +0.4% increase. 

The challenge? This reliance on paid channels and a +13.2 % increase in global digital ad spending in 2024 makes every visit more expensive. The cost of a single visit surged by +9% last year alone.

So, how do you navigate this? Focus on the visitors you already have. While attracting new faces gets costlier, bringing back familiar ones offers a real opportunity. Traffic from returning visitors saw a +1.9% increase, and notably, returning visits from paid channels grew by +5.6%. This hints at the power of engaging your existing audience. It’s time to double down on those experiences that keep people returning, making every visit as valuable as possible.

3. Engagement

Engagement is that crucial thread weaving through the customer journey, from first glance to final decision. It’s disconcerting to see a consistent decline in consumption, a key indicator of how much visitors are truly interacting. Overall consumption, measuring session depth, time on site, and scroll rate, decreased by -6.5% year-on-year. People are spending – 4.6% less time on sites, and even social platforms have seen time spent drop by -3.4%.

So, where are visitors spending their valuable time? Mobile apps stand out as a powerful engagement hub. These are still a fantastic way to connect, especially with your most loyal customers, with repeat visitors driving 96% of all app visits. In 2024, app users consistently delivered stronger engagement:

This highlights a clear path: understanding how consumption differs between new and returning visitors, and leveraging high-performing channels like mobile apps, is key. App users give you more time, proving that a tailored, frictionless experience is the best way to earn attention and keep visitors engaged.

5 quick ways to elevate your digital experience

The good news is that despite rising costs and changing visitor behavior, there are clear paths to outstanding digital experiences. Here are five powerful strategies, straight from our 2025 report, to help you make every visitor interaction count:

1. See the whole journey. Your customers don’t stick to one neat path; their experience isn’t just about single visits. To truly understand what’s working (and what’s not), you need a complete picture of how visitors move through your site. Utilize tools like Journey Analysis to map common user paths and uncover hidden opportunities for improvement.
2. Optimize for authentic mobile engagement. While “mobile first” has been a mantra, it’s time to refine what that means. Mobile apps, in particular, are showing immense success. App users also spend significantly more time, averaging 3.1 minutes per visit compared to 2.5 minutes on mobile web, and boast higher conversion rates. Focus on delivering seamless experiences that reflect how users engage on smaller screens, particularly within your app ecosystem.
3. Actively battle frustration. We know frustration impacts 40% of sessions. But the top performers, what we call “digitally disciplined” teams, are actively fighting back. They removed 4.5 times more frustration than others. Adopt their proactive mindset: set up real-time alerts to catch issues immediately and use Session Replay to step into your visitors’ shoes, seeing exactly where they get stuck or confused. This hands-on approach directly improves engagement and prevents early exits.
4. Deliver hyper-relevant experiences. The consumption gap between new and returning visitors is stark. Returning visitors viewed +0.5% more pages last year, while new visitors saw -1.8% fewer. This highlights the power of knowing your audience. Remove the guesswork by testing personalized and segmented content, especially on landing pages for paid traffic. Tailoring the experience based on visitors’ origin or past behavior can make all the difference.
5. Listen to your customers’ voices. Don’t just guess what visitors want; ask them! Incorporate Voice of Customer (VoC) tools like exit intent or NPS surveys to gather direct feedback on their experiences. Applying insights to these responses can help you spot trends and issues even faster, building stronger connections and fostering loyalty that brings visitors back again and again.

Digital experience report key takeaways

The era of effortless traffic is truly behind us. Quality matters more than ever, with the cost of a visit soaring by +9% and an overall traffic decline of -3.3% year-on-year. It’s about making every single visit count. To further boost your efforts and maximize performance, you might also find valuable insights on how to improve your e-commerce website performance. These insights, alongside solutions from partners like Bazaarvoice that help brands and retailers connect with consumers, are crucial for navigating the complexities of online business.

Here’s our core advice for maximizing every interaction:

• Master the mobile journey, Especially Apps. Don’t just make your site “mobile-friendly”; build it for truly engaging mobile experiences. These optimized mobile paths drive higher conversion rates, proving that dedicated focus pays off.

• Relentlessly combat frustration. Friction isn’t just annoying; it directly impacts your bottom line. User frustration cuts overall session depth, how many pages people see, by a noticeable -6%. Specifically, slow-loading pages lead to -1.5% fewer page views, and moments of poor responsiveness reduce them by -2.1%. The good news? “Digitally disciplined” teams are winning this fight.

• Diversify channels and deepen engagement. Relying solely on a few traffic sources is risky when visits are dwindling. Focus on deepening engagement: websites that increased session depth by 10% or more saw conversion rates jump by 5.4%, while those with shallower journeys saw conversions fall by -13.1%. Every extra page view truly brings you closer to conversion.

To unlock even more insights, read ContentSquare’s complete 2025 Digital Experience Benchmarks Insights Report for the full breakdown.