According to recent research by 1&1 Internet, Inc., 65 percent of US Web users feel that they are regularly inconvenienced by faulty websites, while 68 percent say that they are more critical toward website errors today than they were five years ago.
The study reveals that America's top five common website faults are slow running websites (65 percent), significant differences in Web page loading times (58 percent), broken website pages (42 percent), Web addresses that lead nowhere (34 percent) and online orders that are not processed (32 percent).
These types of errors have resulted in more than 58 percent of consumers deciding not to use a company again as a result of its website. Furthermore, frustrations with a website have led 72 percent of Web users to abandon a company website for a competitor's. Additionally, although most website owners aim to schedule maintenance and upgrades during down times, it appears this still bothers consumers - with 28 percent claiming to regularly feel inconvenienced by this problem.
Surprisingly, 49 percent of respondents believe that websites for small and large companies are equivalent in terms of the frequency of errors, while almost half of respondents (42 percent) report that they regularly feel anger, worry or stress as a result of using a faulty website. However, the most troublesome statistics is that 58 percent of consumers have doubted whether one of their own online transactions was completed properly.
"Unreliable websites continue to reflect badly upon businesses of all types and sizes," says Oliver Mauss, CEO 1&1 Internet, inc. "It is clear that when faced with a faulty or off-line website, consumers will turn elsewhere. Perhaps more surprising is the proportion that will be unwilling to return. With this in mind, businesses must ensure their websites are well designed, have robust functionality, and benefit from the most reliable Web hosting infrastructure available to them."
For example, 1&1 Web hosting uses geo-redundancy to help enhance the reliability of websites. All data and processes are mirrored and operated synchronously in different data centers, so that of there is an unexpected problem, such as an electricity failure, all upcoming processes are automatically taken over by the other data center. Additionally, 1&1 has the ability to carry out updates and planned maintenance work without any disturbance to servers or inconvenience to customers.