Most product managers make a massive mistake. They look at their competitors and they try to do exactly what their competitors do. They benchmark their checkout flow against other retailers. They benchmark their login screen against other fintech apps. They think their users only care about how other similar companies solve the problem.
I stopped doing that years ago. I realized that my users do not have different versions of their brains for different apps. When a user taps an icon on their home screen, they bring the exact same expectations for speed, trust, and simplicity to your app that they brought to the last one they closed.
If your app crashes, the user does not blame their connection. They blame your app. If your login flow takes thirty seconds, the user does not care that other banks take thirty seconds. They remember how fast their mobile wallet was when they bought a coffee this morning. We live in a world where smartphones act as all-in-one service hubs. This means your true competition is not another brand in your sector. Your competition is every other app on the user’s phone.
The smartphone as a unified expectation machine
Pew Research Center data shows that the vast majority of adults use smartphones as their primary window into the digital world. This is not just a tool for calling people anymore. It is a portal for finance, entertainment, grocery shopping, and identity management. When you treat your app as an island, you fail to understand the landscape of modern consumer expectations.
Consider the mobile wallet. When a user taps their phone at a terminal to pay for groceries, they experience near-instant satisfaction. The transaction happens in a blink. If your retail checkout flow requires three form screens, an email verification, and a mandatory account creation step, you have already lost. The user has trained their brain to expect a transaction that takes two seconds. When you force them into a minute-long form, you have created a friction point that they will perceive as a bug, not a feature.
Why internal industry comparisons trap you
When you limit your research to your own industry, you end up in a race to the bottom. You adopt the same bad habits as your competitors. If the industry standard for a password reset is a five-step email loop, you build a five-step email loop. You tell yourself that this is the best practice for the industry.
It is not a best practice. It is a legacy mistake. By comparing yourself only to your peers, you normalize the very frictions that drive users to abandon your platform. You ignore the fact that the rest of the tech world has moved on. If a gaming app like MrQ casino can offer a clean and swift onboarding experience that gets a user to their choice of game, why does your insurance app still require a physical document upload that takes four business days to process?
The user does not care about your compliance burden or your legacy tech debt. They care about their time. When you step outside your industry, you see what is possible. You stop asking how your competitors do things. You start asking how the best apps in the world solve the problem of human attention.
The baseline of frictionless UX
I keep a running list of what I call tiny frictions. These are the small, seemingly harmless design choices that accumulate until a user feels annoyed enough to delete an app. These include:
- Forcing a login before showing the value of the service. Using vague labels like "Better experience" instead of telling me exactly what changed. Adding unnecessary loading screens when the data could be cached locally. Requesting permissions before the user has a reason to grant them. Sending push notifications that provide zero utility.
When I test checkout flows, I do it on a slow connection. I want to see if your app breaks when the network is not perfect. Most apps fail this test. They rely on heavy assets that fail to render or, worse, they hang on a white screen while the user wonders if the app crashed. This is where cross-industry standards matter. If an image-heavy app like Magnific can render high-quality content with optimized loading patterns, there is no excuse for a retail app to stall out on a basic product list.
Personalization versus privacy tradeoffs
Everyone talks about personalization as if it is a magic wand. They talk about recommendation engines that know what sonicmenuusa.com the user wants before the user does. But personalization comes with costs. It requires data. It requires the user to trust you with their history. It requires the user to be okay with an algorithm watching their movements.
Product teams often pretend these tradeoffs do not exist. They hide the data collection in the fine print. They prioritize the algorithm over the user experience. This is a mistake. Users are getting smarter. They recognize when a recommendation engine is helpful and when it is intrusive. The best apps balance this by being transparent about what they collect and why they need it. If you want to personalize, earn the right to do so through clear value, not by hiding the mechanics.
Comparison table: The friction spectrum
This table compares the friction levels I see across different sectors. Note how the "high-utility" apps have solved for user time while others are still stuck in legacy patterns.
Convenience drives purchasing decisions
We live in a convenience-driven economy. If a user can buy a shirt with two taps on a fashion app, they will not be happy when your B2B software tool requires a sales rep to call them to get a price quote. The standards of B2C influence the expectations of B2B. We have normalized instant gratification. If your product does not offer a path of least resistance, the user will find one that does.
Reduced comparison is the end goal. You want the user to reach a point where they do not even look at your competitors because your flow is so smooth that they cannot imagine using anything else. You do not win by having the best features. You win by having the lowest barrier to entry. Every time a user encounters a screen they do not need, or a form field that is redundant, you give them a reason to close your app and open another one.
Actionable steps for your product team
If you want to stop building apps that users complain about, you need to change your methodology today. Stop holding meetings where you only look at your competitors. Start auditing the apps you use in your daily life. Why do you use that specific coffee app every morning? Is it because the coffee is better, or because the app is fast and predictable?
1. Audit your login flow
If it takes more than three seconds to get into your app, you are failing. Implement passkeys. Use biometric authentication. Kill the password reset flow wherever possible. If a user has to remember a complex password, they will eventually leave.
2. Kill the passive voice in your microcopy
Stop saying "Your request is being processed." Say "We are processing your request." Stop saying "An error has occurred." Say "We cannot connect right now." Clarity is a competitive advantage. If a user does not know what is happening in your app, they will assume the worst.
3. Test on slow networks
Take your app into an elevator or a subway. Use a 3G network emulator. If your checkout button disappears when the connection drops, you have a bug. Build your UI to handle state changes gracefully. If the user loses connection, tell them exactly what happened and how to resume without starting the whole flow over.
4. Respect the user's intelligence
Stop using marketing fluff to hide poor performance. Do not call your app "revolutionary" if it is just a wrapper for a web form. Users appreciate honest, functional design over empty promises. If you focus on making the core utility of your app faster and more reliable, you will not need to rely on marketing buzzwords to keep your retention numbers up.
The smartphone has changed the game. It has made the user the most powerful entity in the room. They have infinite choices and zero patience for poor design. If you continue to compare your app only to your industry peers, you will continue to ignore the lessons that other industries have already mastered. Start looking at the best, not just the local. Your users are already doing it.