New research from application monitoring service Monitis confirms the impact of web performance on sales performance.
The survey revealed that 56% of consumers who spend more than two hours per week shopping online have cancelled an order due to an error or slow response time.
"Simply avoiding downtime is often the primary goal for web developers and designers when maintaining websites, but as the holiday rush has shifted to online stores, success depends less on the minimum threshold of uptime and more on meeting the various other expectations of shoppers, to keep them coming back," said Hovhannes Avoyan, General Manager at Monitis. "Consumers turn to online vendors for convenience, so it's critical that e-retailers ensure a positive shopping experience by focusing on website usability and speed.
The survey of over 1,000 U.S. online shoppers, which explored online shopping habits, the factors influences users choosing an online vendor, and behavior when confronted with retail websites that are not functioning correctly, contains a long list of useful information.
- Almost three-quarters (74%) of all online shoppers said that they would switch to a competing online vendor if they could find a better user experience and faster website than the one they currently use.
- Frequent online shoppers are even less tolerant of slow e-retail websites. 86% of consumers who spend two or more hours shopping each week say that they would abandon their chosen online vendor if they found a faster competitor.
- 81% of all respondents listed convenience as the number one reason for choosing to shop online rather than making purchases at brick and mortar stores, while only 61% say that price is the most important factor.
- More than half of all respondents (56%) also indicated that website usability is an important factor when comparing one retail website to another, coming in just behind price and reputation.
- 61% of all online shoppers would leave a web page and search for a competing vendor if it took longer than 30 seconds to load.
- The most popular time to shop online (40% of all respondents) is actually during typical 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. work hours while the next largest group (32%) of online shoppers typically shops in the early evening between 5 p.m. and 8 p.m.
