Conviva’s new 2025 State of Digital Experience Report reveals widespread issues impacting consumer satisfaction and business performance.
The report reveals rising dissatisfaction as consumers grow increasingly impatient with poor online experiences. Overall 91% of consumers encountered frustrating digital service issues in the past year. Businesses risk backlash, lost revenue, and damaged reputations if they fail to address these problems. Poor digital experiences have immediate and tangible impacts on revenue: 55% of consumers abandon their purchase, 50% switch to another company, and 39% cancel their subscription.
Consumers expect perfect digital experiences and are unforgiving when businesses fall short. If poor experiences on a digital platform increase from 1% to 2% of the total time, consumers spend 42% less time on it. Conversely, those with at least 99% positive experiences spend 6.5x more time with a service.
The emotional toll also is significant. As brands fail to meet consumer expectations, nearly two in five (39%) people report feeling ‘angry’ because digital services don’t work: reflecting an increase in frequency from two years ago. More than 1 in 10 (11%) say they’ve felt physically sick or unwell after a poor digital experience, highlighting the extent of their frustration.
“Consumer expectations for seamless digital experiences are skyrocketing, but many businesses aren’t keeping pace,” said Keith Zubchevich, CEO, Conviva. “In today’s attention economy, customers have zero tolerance for digital friction. Distracting them with more ‘digital to-dos’ or disrupting them with issues sends their attention, money, and loyalty straight to competitors. More marketing and new features won’t suffice; flawless digital service performance for all customer cohorts is critical. Companies that fail to deliver exceptional experiences for every customer will face increased churn, revenue losses, and lasting damage to their brand reputation.”
Additional findings include:
- Nearly half (49%) of consumers think companies don’t care when their customers have a poor digital experience.
- 1 in 4 consumers abandon online purchases if they can’t complete their transaction within 10 seconds.
- The most common digital experience irritants are broken webpages or links, unexpected crashes, and login issues.
Despite the significant impact of negative experiences on business outcomes, the inverse of these trends is also true, as businesses that deliver a high-quality digital experience are rewarded. The majority (93%) of consumers using a digital service will return if they receive a great experience. In the hospitality sector, 41% of consumers say they are more willing to overlook negative customer reviews if a hotel delivers a great digital experience when they are attempting to book a stay.
“It’s not just about finding and fixing outages. Businesses must address the ‘thousand little cuts’—repeated issues impacting distinct groups of customers that quietly drive them away,” continued Zubchevich. “Customer complaints are increasingly visible on social media, yet outages are reducing. This means many customers experience friction points and abandon purchases without businesses even knowing. Empowering teams with real-time performance analytics and automation to pinpoint and resolve issues at every touchpoint in the customer journey helps deliver seamless experiences, protect revenue, and turn customer experience into a strategic advantage.”
Methodology
The report is based on a survey of 4,000 consumers (2,001 in the US and 2,000 in the UK) conducted by Censuswide and commissioned by Conviva in February 2025. It also includes insights from the digital experiences of 37 million users and 223 million user sessions across all continents, representing 258 billion events, sourced from the Conviva platform in March 2025.
