Why Your Website Loading Speed Is Critical To Your Success
No one likes to wait
No one likes to wait. According to a site abandonment study conducted by Jupiter Research for Akamai, at least 28% of shoppers online do not like to wait more than four seconds for the site to load before navigating away to other sites.
These figures represent 19% dial up users and 33% broadband customers.
Understandably broadband customers expect a higher website loading speed. However it was surprising to see that 45% of dialup users were also unwilling to wait for more than 6 seconds for the page to load.
Moreover, power shoppers, those who spend more than $1500 each time they shop, demand these faster website loading speed.
Loading speed on online retailers websites has a huge impact on customer loyalty. Sites that load faster definitely attract more number of customers repeatedly.According to Jupiter Research
62% of shoppers said they will not purchase from a site that loads slowly.
64% of shoppers online said they will never visit a retailer with a website that has a low loading speed.
48% of online shoppers said if they were dissatisfied with the loading speed of a retailers website they will move on to purchase from the competitor.
28% of shoppers said they will look at the company negatively if their website was not fast loading.
27% of shoppers will advise their friends and relatives not to visit the particular site
16% reported that they will never visit the retailers offline store after a bad experience online.
After analyzing these results Jupiter Research concludes by recommending that online retailers ensure a website that loads in 4 seconds or less.
The year 2010 brings more expectations from customers than ever. According to a follow up research conducted by Akamai in association with Forrester Research it was found that poor website performance has a huge impact on customer loyalty. The world has become faster paced as customers do not want to wait even 2 seconds for the page to load.
According to an Internet Retailers retail survey:
68% of retailers say their home page loads within 3 seconds
43% of the retailers sites load in 2 seconds
81.8% of websites for dial up users load within 30 seconds
50.6% of sites load within 15 seconds for dial up users
43.3% of retailers feel that features such as AJAX animation and video impact the loading time of site to a great extent.
According to the Internet Retailer it is absolutely necessary to gauge site performance with the help of custom applications added to the web hosting service and ecommerce platform and performance of new page treatments such as A/B testing before hosting. This is to ensure that all functions and features that work best in certain environments continue to work efficiently when installed on the retailers platform.
Knowing exactly what you have to monitor, fine tuning your website on a constant basis, and maintaining a consistent and high website loading speed is extremely vital to the success of any online venture.