The typical online user in this day and age has a short attention span, especially when searching for products and services on the go with mobile devices. As a result, websites that take a couple of extra seconds to load tend to have significantly higher bounce rates than websites that are quick to load. SmartBear recently prepared an infographic exhibiting the deleterious effects of a slow website and its negative impact on generating sales for E-Commerce businesses.

The immediate effects of a slow website

The longer a website takes the load, the more likely it is to miss out on potential sales. Part of the infographic prepared by SmartBear investigated the effects of an extra second in the loading time of a typical website. The results indicate that this extra second will result in:

• 11% fewer page views.
• 16% decrease in customer satisfaction.
• 7% loss in conversions.

Companies that depend solely on E-Commerce to generate sales can easily put a monetary value on that extra second. For example, online retail giant Amazon would suffer a $1.6 Billion drop in sales as a result of their website taking one second longer to load over the course of a year. The most typical reason why websites take a while to load is due to flashy aesthetics that do not provide a lot of value to the functionality of the website’s flow.

Conversion rates suffer on slow websites.

The research prepared indicates that websites that take under five seconds will generate conversions at a rate of 1.5%. This success rate significantly increases for websites that take one-two seconds to load, averaging to an optimal rate of 3.5%. Websites that take more than five seconds to load will suffer in relation to conversions, falling to rates far below 1.5%.

Online shopping is becoming more popular

The proliferation of mobile technology in the form of tablets and super-powered smartphones is making it easier for the typical shopper to transact while on the go. Most research indicates that this trend will continue to become more popular, with as many as 192 million consumers in the United States expected to be shopping online by 2016. It also proves to be more cost-efficient for niche brick & mortar stores to shift businesses online as a means of cutting down on overhead.

Making the shift to E-Commerce

E-Commerce provides a multitude of benefits for small business owners trying to make an impact in the cluttered retail environment. Social media, SEO, pay-per-click advertising, and email marketing provided unlimited opportunities to reach target markets worldwide and generate sales across multiple channels. Online stores also provide ease of shopping for the consumer, allowing them to bypass ridiculously long lines on consumer ‘holidays’ such as Black Friday (USA) and Boxing Day (Canada). The ubiquity and accessibility of smart mobile technology will also allow business owners to leverage the power of reaching consumers anywhere.

Image courtesy of 500memes.com
Infographic courtesy of Flickr, ogomogo