E-tailers would be well advised to keep an eye on their website speed, as research consistently reveals that slow e-commerce websites impact sales.
Google research shows that a slow-loading e-commerce website will lose at least 32% of visitors. This is quite a startling figure, yet slow page speed continues to be a widespread issue among e-tailers.
Visualsoft recently analysed the speed of the UK’s top 250 e-Commerce websites. They found 62% rated as ‘poor’ – taking longer than nine seconds to load on 3G. 16% of retailers’ sites took 15 seconds or longer to load.
Research shows that 14% of your audience will start shopping at another site if your page loads are slow, and 23% will simply stop the shopping experience or walk away from the computer altogether.
Consumers are impatient with Technology
We blame millenials for the \’I-want-it-now\’ culture, but actually this isn\’t a new problem.
10 years ago, Amazon found that every 100ms of latency cost them 1% in sales. Google found an extra .5 seconds in search page generation time dropped traffic by 20%. A broker could lose $4 million in revenues per millisecond if their electronic trading platform is 5 milliseconds behind the competition.
When it comes to technology, the public have no patience – and their impatience is growing thanks to the increased use of handheld devices.
E-commerce websites need to perform well on modern devices
Modern consumers don\’t just shop online using a pc, they shop on mobile phones, tablets, on Alexa and even via watches. Therefore, websites built before the explosion of handheld tech need to think about updating – fast.
Today\’s e-commerce websites need to be lightning fast to perform well on all devices, whether that is through website optimisation or even a custom-built app.
How impatient are mobile e-commerce website users?
Stats on mobile use show extreme levels of consumer impatience.
84% have experienced difficulty completing a mobile e-commerce transaction – and a whopping 40% of them are likely to switch to a competitor site immediately afterwards.
Mobile transactions are set to explode, with predictions showing that by 2021, 53% of all online purchases will be conducted on mobile devices.
How can e-tailers improve their e-commerce website?
Bluntly, if South Wales e-tailers expect to see a share, they need to focus on page speed and responsiveness issues now, as well as getting an SSL certificate if you don\’t have one already.
Otherwise, you can expect to see your customers voting with their fingers.
If local businesses need any advice or would like a free analysis of your e-commerce website, South Wales Web would be delighted to help – call us on 01656 773388.