September 14th, 2009
E-commerce sites: You have 2 seconds to load your Web pages
E-commerce sites have two seconds to load a Web page or consumers will click away. And after three seconds nearly all customers will split, according to research by Forrester and Akamai.
Akamai had Forrester conduct a followup to a 2006 survey. The 2006 survey found that 4 seconds was the threshold for Web page loading. Three years later that threshold has been halved.
Quick page loading is a big factor in loyalty for e-commerce sites. No surprise there. It’s also no surprise that Akamai—which sells services to speed up Web pages—is doing the survey. Nevertheless, the results are interesting.
Some tidbits from the 1,048 online shoppers surveyed:
- 47 percent of consumers expect a Web page to load in 2 seconds or less and 40 percent won’t wait more than 3 seconds.
- 52 percent say quick page loading is important to their loyalty. In 2006, that tally was 12 percent.
- 23 percent will stop shopping with slow page loads.
- 79 percent of shoppers that get slow page loads say they are less likely to buy from that site again. Meanwhile, 64 percent just buy goods from another store.
- 16 percent of consumers have shopped via a mobile phone.
You can find the full survey (with registration) here.
Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and Editorial Director of ZDNet sister site TechRepublic. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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