You routinely hear how we strongly encourage you to focus heavily on your e-commerce sales.
It’s so insanely obvious you have to be foolish to ignore it.
…But what exactly about online retail do you need to focus on?
Truthfully, because of the data you can collect (everything on a website can be monitored and analyzed), you can easily get lost in the details, burn away all your time, and have nothing to show for it.
Well, a new report by Retail Systems Research shows you one area to focus on: your website’s speed.
They found:
- 52% of customers get frustrated when a website loads too slowly
- 90% have left
- 57% will go to another similar retailer
- 41% go to Amazon
- 21% will never return
What is “slow” and “fast” to consumers?
The report found the fastest websites load in about 2.2 seconds compared to an astounding 43.9 seconds for the slowest site.
Could you imagine yourself waiting nearly a minute for a website to fully load?
If you want to experience excellent website load times, the report noted that Ascena, Groupon Goods, 1-800 Contacts, Overstock.com, and Lands’ End were among the best performers.
Auto Anything Cuts Page Load Time in Half and Increases Sales 13%
See the difference a fast website load time makes.
Auto Anything’s website used to take up to 10 seconds to load.
How would you feel while browsing site to site, only to find that it was taking 10 seconds to load?
The company knew it wasn’t up to snuff.
So they enlisted a web design company to help them optimize their page load times.
To prove what works, the company sent 50% of customers to the old website that took 10 seconds to load. It also sent the other 50% to the newer, faster version that took just 5 seconds to load.
And consumers responded with a:
- 9% higher conversion rate (from random visitor to purchasing customer)
- 11% higher purchase size
- 13% increase in total sales
And Auto Anything got the unexpected benefit of being able to reduce some of the costs associated with maintaining its massive website of more than 2 million pages.
So, there’s really no doubt about it: your website’s speed means a lot to your customers.
Stop sending 41% of your customers directly to Amazon!
And instead focus on a top-notch website experience for your customers, which will only do you more good as people buy from home more during the coronavirus market.