Anyone looking to market their goods and services online ought to ensure that their website loads quickly, because a new report shows that e-commerce buyers won’t wait around for long.
A survey conducted by Digital.com asked 1,250 online shoppers just how long they’re willing to wait for a web page to load before they abandon all hope, leaving the website and their intended purchases. The results showed an eye-popping fifty-three percent expected the page to load in three seconds or less, and twenty one percent say slow-loading pages are their biggest gripe when shopping online.
There’s a reason we’re becoming the ‘instant generation’ – nineteen percent of online shoppers say they’ll abandon a web page that takes longer than two or three seconds to load, and eight percent will leave after one second.
Burt Flickinger, managing director for the retail consulting firm Strategic Resource Group, isn’t the least bit surprised to see these numbers. “This is critically important because people are looking at hundreds of screen images a day…and taking eight seconds to load a page might prompt them to scan for something else to look at.”
Huy Nguyen, a digital marketing executive, concurs. “In today’s digitally-connected world, where many people have access to high-speed internet at home and on the go through their mobile devices…it’s completely reasonable for consumers to expect a quick and easy online shopping experience.”
Recent figures from the U.S. Census Bureau show that online sales represented 13% of the nation’s total sales during the third quarter of 2021. Smartinsights predicts that e-commerce sales in the U.S. will grow to 23.6% of all sales by 2025.
Looking further at Digital.com’s report of why users leave a website, security concerns account for 20%, unclear site navigation 15% and websites that aren’t optimized for mobile devices being 15%.