New report from Contentsquare provides answers to tough questions
Digital experience has become the cornerstone of modern customer engagement, yet many brands still struggle to deliver seamless interactions across their digital properties. With rising customer acquisition costs and evolving consumer behaviors, understanding these digital dynamics has never been more critical.
Contentsquare announced its latest Digital Experience Benchmark report on January 28. The survey analyzed over 90 billion sessions across 6,000 websites to uncover key trends shaping digital experience in 2025.
The topic of digital customer engagement is important to our readers and we contacted Jean-Christophe Pitié, Chief Marketing & Partnerships Officer of Contentsquare, to explore the findings in this new report in more depth. Jean-Christophe is at the forefront of solving for these challenges and his company’s AI-powered analytics platform helps thousands of brands across the globe optimize their digital presence by analyzing billions of customer interactions.
WM: Your report talks about a ‘digital butterfly effect’ where small changes are creating major impacts across customer experiences. What are the most significant ripple effects, and how should marketing leaders be thinking about this phenomenon?
JCP: What fascinates me about today’s digital landscape is how interconnected every element has become. We’re seeing small shifts at the top of the funnel – changes in traffic sources, evolving channel preferences, and rising ad costs – cascade through the entire customer journey in unexpected ways. These ripples then combine with other changes, like shifting content consumption patterns and growing customer expectations, to create much larger impacts on business outcomes.
Marketing leaders really need to shift their mindset from viewing digital touchpoints as isolated moments and start seeing them as part of an intricate ecosystem where every small change can trigger significant downstream effects. What surprises a lot of people is that it’s not usually a website crashing that sends customers running. Instead, it’s the culmination of many ‘micro-frictions’ – little annoyances that add up and result in a customer abandoning their journey.
When you understand that CX is full of touchpoints and small moments, and that they tell a bigger story, it alters your understanding of how best to serve customers. This is why having a holistic view of your digital experience is no longer optional – it’s an essential element to long-term success.
WM: Your report shows that the cost of acquiring visitors continues to rise, making each digital interaction more valuable than ever. How should companies evolve their optimization strategies to make the most of every site visit?
JCP: Success today hinges on creating seamless, connected experiences across every touchpoint. Think about it this way: when a visitor reaches your site, they’ve likely already interacted with your brand somewhere else – maybe through social media, an email, or a search result. The journey they’re on needs to feel continuous and cohesive, from that first interaction all the way to conversion, if that’s their goal. Consumers simply do not think about their experiences by channel – they only care if it works or not.
For marketers and digital experience leaders, this means carefully examining every element of their digital presence for micro-frictions that could disrupt that journey – whether through slow-loading pages, confusing navigation, or unclear calls-to-action.
What we’re seeing from the most successful companies is a commitment to systematic monitoring, testing, and refinement against this – what we call ‘digitally disciplined’ digital marketing. These teams are not throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks; they’re deliberate in their CX and design choices, they’re consistently A/B testing everything from button placements to content hierarchy; they’re actively tracking to see if customers respond as intended, and they’re pivoting and tweaking the journey as they go.
What’s more is that our data shows that this disciplined approach pays off: companies that excel at removing friction points and enhancing their customer journeys are seeing deeper engagement and significantly better conversion rates as a result.
Perhaps most importantly, though, optimization can’t be a one-time effort. Digital experience needs to be treated as a living, breathing entity that requires ongoing attention and updates. Every click, scroll, and interaction is an opportunity to learn and improve. Given that acquiring visitors is becoming increasingly expensive – up 19% within the last two years – making the most of these opportunities isn’t just good practice, it’s now a business imperative.
WM: It’s no surprise that reducing customer frustration correlates strongly with improved retention rates, but what advice would you give to marketing leaders looking to actually address this? What’s the first step in enabling success?
JCP: The key is shifting from reactive to proactive experience management. Too often, companies are reactive to things like customer complaints or rising bounce rates. Taking the systematic approach, I mentioned earlier, one that treats digital experience improvement as a continuous, data-driven practice rather than a periodic exercise – is a much stronger and effective tactic in identifying and preventing these issues before they arise or in as close to real time to address them.
What we’re seeing work really well are things like setting up real-time alerts, using tools like session replay to understand customer experiences, and regularly monitoring customer signals to ensure they address problems before they impact retention and conversion rates. The results of these efforts speak for themselves: according to our data, digitally disciplined brands removed 4.5 times more friction from their experiences than those who don’t, reducing load time frustration by 22% and rage clicks by nearly 5%.
While technology is critical, the real differentiator comes from embedding customer experience into the organization’s approach from day one – and ensuring everyone within the company, regardless of role, understands why it’s important. Companies that treat every customer interaction as an opportunity to improve prioritize customer experience excellence and take decisive action stay ahead of competitors that don’t.
WM: Looking at industry trends, how do you see the rise of AI changing the digital experience landscape, particularly given the shifts in search behavior and content consumption patterns?
JCP: We’re definitely at a unique inflection point with AI in the digital experience space. While much attention has focused on AI’s impact on search and content creation, I believe we’re on the cusp of something much more transformative. The path forward isn’t just about using AI to understand customer intention and happiness – it’s about creating truly autonomous, intelligent experiences that adapt in real-time to each individual customer. And by 2030, I think we’ll see AI fundamentally reimagining how brands and customers interact online.
All signs point to us moving beyond relatively static experiences to “perfect experiences” – where every interaction is hyper contextual, seamless, and tailored to the individual. We’re already seeing the early stages of this as we build further from AI copilots to true AI agents and I think this will only continue to progress and become more sophisticated. The building blocks are coming together. These tools will be key in engaging customers according to their individual preferences, doing the heavy lifting in automating experimentation, and give brands the time and resources to focus on nurturing customer relationships to build loyalty.
What excites me most about this shift is how it will inherently democratize digital excellence – AI will not only be available to very large enterprises with very deep pockets. Tools are now accessible and lowering the barriers of entry for AI. In the future, AI will serve as a 24/7 business analyst and customer assistant, making experiences better for brand employees and customers alike.
Bottom line: The organizations that thrive in this new era will be those that embrace AI not just as a tool for efficiency, but as a means to fundamentally enhance how they understand, serve, and adapt to their customers. For consumers, it will further infiltrate the way they connect with each other and the brands they want to engage with and elevate their experiences overall.