How GrowthFriction works

Paste your URL → automated 7-factor scan → composite AUG score + the single biggest friction to fix this week. Total time: 60 seconds.

1. Paste your URL

Enter your SaaS product's root URL (landing page, marketing site, or app). GrowthFriction handles redirects, internationalized domains, and trailing-slash variants automatically. No signup. No card.

2. The 7-factor scan

Each factor is scored 1-10 against a published rubric. The framework — AUG v3 — has been battle-tested across 30+ fleet SaaS products. Multiplicative scoring: a zero in any factor near-zeros the whole.

1. Acquisition

Are real people finding your product? Scores top-of-funnel signal: SEO depth, GEO/LLM-citation readiness (ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini), referral channel diversity, programmatic page count, and the 12 fastest-compounding acquisition channels for solo founders. Floor: ≥1,000 sessions/month before downstream dimensions matter.

2. Activation

Do first-time visitors hit the “aha” moment within 10 seconds? Catches empty-state failures, signup-wall friction, blank-dashboard syndrome, time-to-first-value gaps, and the 10 onboarding patterns that flip cold-traffic activation rate from 15% to 45%+.

3. Engagement

Are activated users actually using the product weekly? 10 measurable signals: bounce rate, pages per session, active time on page, scroll depth, event rate, core-loop completion, exit-page quality, inbound click-depth, pogo-sticking rate. Targets calibrated per product archetype (SaaS-B2B vs SaaS-consumer vs reference vs e-commerce).

4. Retention

Do users return without notification pressure? D1, D7, D30 return rates measured against baseline. Cohort decay curves projected forward. Floor: any ship that drops 7d-retention by >10% is auto-flagged as rollback-candidate (a revenue-positive ship that hurts retention is a long-term net negative).

5. Advocacy

Do users bring more users? Scores k-factor, share-per-session rate, embed loops, word-of-mouth attribution, and the 10 advocacy features that compound discovery without paid spend. The only acquisition channel that doesn't deplete.

6. Monetization

Does the product earn? Scored against your product's revenue model: pricing-page conversion, trial-to-paid rate, upgrade-trigger placement, churn-to-LTV ratio, and the math floor below which acquisition spend cannot recover (revenue_ceiling = UV × pages_per_session × RPM ÷ 1000).

7. Performance

Does the product feel fast? Real-user Core Web Vitals: LCP (largest contentful paint), INP (interaction to next paint), CLS (cumulative layout shift), TTFB (time to first byte). Measured under throttled-4G + mid-range-mobile conditions. Every 1 second of LCP costs ~7% of conversion — performance is a growth multiplier, not a technical concern.

3. Get your composite AUG score

Each factor scored 1-10. Composite formula:

AUG = 100 × Acq × Act × Eng × Ret × Adv × Mon × Perf ÷ 10⁷

Geometric mean × 10. The factor with the lowest individual score is your single biggest growth friction. Fixing it compounds the rest. Action thresholds:

4. Get your action plan

Every weak factor surfaces as a specific, prioritized recommendation: which page to fix, what copy to change, which schema to add, what tracking to wire. No vague “improve engagement” advice — concrete actions per fix.

What GrowthFriction does NOT do

Why diagnose all 7 factors together

Most founders optimize one dimension (usually Acquisition) and ignore the others. The result: a leaky bucket no acquisition spend can fill. Combining the audit catches cross-dimensional issues — a single fix often lifts 2-3 factors simultaneously (e.g., fixing onboarding lifts Activation, Engagement, AND Retention).

Run your first audit at /audit.