Forrester eCommerce Study: The 2 Second Rule Is Critical

Today Forrester released their eCommerce Web Site Performance Report and the findings are crucial to serious online retailers and even hobby retailers can get some good takeaways from it.

Since the rise of online shopping in the late 1990s, we have seen many evolutions in the underlying technology infrastructure and in consumer expectations. Elements fueling these evolutions include the rise of broadband access in homes and businesses, improvements to the usability of sites and Web navigation such as search, the number of leading brands and retailers selling online, as well as improvements to the underlying technology behind sites.

In the summer of 2009, Akamai Technologies commissioned Forrester Consulting to help understand how customer expectations around online shopping have evolved and what the implications are for retailers that fail to meet those demands. In 2006, Akamai commissioned a study to address similar questions; this is a follow-up study to examine changes in consumer expectations.

So here are some good take away bullet points from the study:

Based on this study of 1,048 online shoppers, Forrester’s study yielded these key findings…

1. Consumers become impatient when pages take longer than 2 seconds to load.
2. Poor site performance leads to shopper dissatisfaction and site abandonment more than ever before.
3. The consequences for online retailers with underperforming sites are lost sales, and the impact reaches beyond the Web.
4. Mobile is a nascent but emerging shopping channel, and performance is key to consumer adoption.
5. It is clear that there are serious consequences for an online retailer with an underperforming site. However, by taking steps to improve site features and performance, online retailers can look to increase overall consumer satisfaction and ultimately increase sales.

Guess you can see why eSTORES was such a big topic on last weeks B.S. Walks When Money Talks

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