30 years of living digitally. What people love and hate about online life – and what this means for brands

It is impossible to say precisely when people first began spending time online. However, we can generalise that the digital transition started around 30 years ago. In the mid-1990s the web went mainstream thanks to products like Internet Explorer and AOL dial up.

Three decades later, digital life is now part of our everyday routines. Indeed, industry data says the average internet user spent six hours and 38 minutes online a day in 3Q 2024.

This shift is driving huge economic value. According to the ecommerce provider Shopify, global online sales should hit $6.56 trillion in 2025. It expects ecommerce to break the $8 trillion barrier for the first time in 2027.

Clearly, people are comfortable doing more and more online. But that doesn’t mean the experience is seamless. For many consumers and employees, it can still be a source of frustration.

So, what are the main points of friction? How is this impacting brands? And what can they do about it?

The 2025 edition of Thales Digital Trust Index report provides some answers. It quizzed 14,009 respondents across 14 countries to gain a global view of consumer sentiment. Here are its main conclusions.

Losing patience online

After 30 years of innovation in website design and user experience, you might expect digital transactions to feel effortless by now. But for many consumers, that’s still not the case.

Identification and verification processes remain a particular pain point, along with pop-ups, payment options, unpredictable pricing and more. In fact, 27 percent of people report encountering downtime or slow service, while 13 percent have been dropped from an online queue.

So, what are the main triggers for frustration?

Here are the top reasons for consumers losing patience online:

1.    Advertising pop-ups 38%
2.    Password re-sets 31%
3.    Having to re-enter personal information 28%
4.    CAPTCHA tests 28%
5.    Long queues 27%    
6.    Chatbots 24%
7.    Complex cookie options 23%    
8.    Having to enter payment details 18%    
9.    Banking verification 17%    
10.    Dynamic pricing 14%    
11.    Brands forgetting my online preferences 14%

Online trust: is the burden on consumers?

Who is responsible for keeping consumers safe online? According to the research: not brands. Instead, consumers feel they have to look after their own safety. They say they are required to negotiate long on-boarding processes, navigate complex consent forms and flag potential breaches.

In short, consumers believe brands are doing a poor job of earning trust. Here are three findings from the report that reveal why.

•    63 percent of consumers believe brands put too much onus on the consumer for data protection
•    37 percent are forced to share data
•    19 percent have been told their personal data has been compromised
•    10 percent have had credit card or financial data stolen.

You can have my data, but on my terms

Demanding too much personal information is the number one cause of friction among consumers. 31 percent have abandoned a brand in the past 12 months for this reason.

Still, this does not mean they’re completely against data sharing. 89 percent say they are willing to do so. They just want the process to offer them control and transparency. The research found:

•    86 percent of consumers expect some level of privacy rights from the companies they interact with online
•    52 percent demand the right to be informed that their personal data is being collected 
•    53 percent want right to have their personal data erased
•    37 percent expect the right to correct their personal data
•    25 percent want to be able to request a copy of their personal data.

Technology to the rescue

64 percent of consumers said their online confidence will increase if brands adopt new security and data protection techniques – especially in relation to passwords.

Consumers hate passwords. 16 percent said the need to create long and complex passwords is a reason for switching brands. Three-quarters expressed enthusiasm for passwordless alternatives. Over half (51 percent) indicated increased trust in brands that use biometric authentication such as fingerprint or facial recognition

Meanwhile 48 percent of consumers would trust a brand more if it used passkeys, which use cryptographic keys that are unique to each user.

Another promising technique for reducing risk without extra friction is 
Risk-Based Authentication (RBA). Here, the brand analyses a user’s IP address, physical location, browser history, device and behaviour to score each transaction/user on a case-by-case basis. RBA offers high security, with minimal interruption.

Brand trust in the workplace

In a world of remote working, businesses need to look beyond their consumers and build trust with employees too. The end user issues around verification, UX, access and data gathering apply to workers too.

The report paints a concerning picture. It found 41 percent of remote workers believe the process of accessing work accounts is too arduous. 56 percent get frustrated every time they have to create a new work password. And 42 percent cannot access all aspects of their work profile when working remotely. All these figures are up year over year.

More encouragingly, workers believe their employers want to do better. 57 percent say their employer values the importance of a good digital experience for employees. Only 9 percent don’t.

Of course, it is not only employees that need to connect to a company’s systems. Accessing must extend to suppliers and partners too. A special B2B edition of the Thales report reveals the particular challenges here. It found that, on average, firms spend 47.8 minutes per month dealing with issues accessing an external partner’s system.

To read the full Thales Digital Trust Index report, click here.