Research by a customer data platform has found that website delays can cost retailers over a billion pounds in lost sales per year. QuBit’s results, reported by Econsultancy, show that slow loading speeds have a huge effect on whether someone stays on your site or not. It has seen retailers lose an estimated £1.73 billion and seems to show just how impatient the net population has become in the past few years.
In terms of the statistics on slow loading times the report shows in 2006 users were happy to wait for four seconds for a page to load. That then halved to two by 2009. Add to this that Google now considers a page “slow” if it takes over 1.5 seconds to load, subsequently relegating it down the rankings, and you can start to see why firms are getting caught out.
The report itself surveyed 60,000 Internet users leaving any of 80 websites that were included by the firm. 8 percent of the sample cited slow loading pages as a reason for abandoning purchases. QuBit, run by four one-time Google employees, recognized that not everyone would complete their purchase so weighted the average conversion rate of web shoppers (4.35 percent) against the value of global sales (£496 billion) and arrived at the £1.73 billion.
QuBit’s report doesn’t implicitly mention the gaming industry but it’s plain to see that these statistics will be of interest. If your ears haven’t pricked up already then the next fact will have you at panic stations: 74 percent of users will abandon a mobile site after waiting for five seconds. Mobile is experiencing an explosion in gaming activity right now and people on the move are even less patient than normal net users. It translates to “if you have a slow app, punters will be on their bike before you know it”.
These figures again place a huge emphasis on the need for brilliant customer service delivery. There are so many gambling sites out there that if yours is noticeably slower than anyone else the punters will simply go elsewhere and the statistics here will be a wake up call to any of the slow coaches if nothing else.
