Akamai Technologies (AKAM) recently commissioned JupiterResearch to conduct a study to see what it was that consumers disliked the most on poor performing shopping sites.
The three major concerns are:
1. Slow page loading
The study revealed that on an average, visitors won't wait more than four seconds for a site to load before they abandon the site.
2. Prices too high
3. Shipping Costs
This is one of those areas where retailers really can't fool around much with. Consumers know that some companies will jack up the shipping and handling costs to offset a low price. I wouldn't play around with this at all. You can even turn skepticism aside by at a minimum offering shipping discounts, and in a lot of cases; free shipping. It's a real differentiator.
One thing that increased bandwidth can fool a company on, is that they think that whatever they're putting on their pages will load extremely fast because bandwidth will take care of the loading problem. With four seconds being the average limit people are willing to wait, I wouldn't delude myself into thinking that bandwidth guarantees the limit.
For one thing, all bandwidth isn't created equal and has various loading speeds. Don't think that it is the answer to quick loading. The responsibility is upon your company to ensure that the great majority of visitors will have a fast experience in getting to what they want.
The conclusion for shoppers was that over 33% of them that had a bad experience would never come back to the site again, and 75% said that they probably would ever come back to the again. They will also share that bad experience with others.
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