E-commerce is one of the fastest growing businesses today. It has expanded so much that they are giving conventional mom and pop stores a run for their money. Even though the day is far when they pose a credible challenge, e-commerce ventures are surely paving the way for a fast revolution. The key word here is speed. Speed is everything in today’s hectic world, and if e-commerce statistics are anything to go by, speed determines your chance to net a customer or lose them. For years, website speed has always been an integral aspect of web design and development. Today, it has become crucial.
E-commerce needs a fast website-a very fast website
Fear is a strong motivating factor. When it comes to online businesses, the fear of losing your hard earned cash can be detrimental. When we go online, we are faced with a myriad amount of scammers and tricksters. This feeling of being fooled gives us negative feedback. E-commerce is based on trust; a whole lot more than most businesses. The fact that you do not make a physical transaction and do not speak to a person, feel your product and such other common things we take for granted while shopping at a store add up to the fear factor. 44% of online shoppers feel that if there is a delay in the webpage loading while carrying out a transaction, something is wrong with it. They panic and abandon the process.
This does not bode well for e-commerce sites. They may have all the right intentions but a slow loading website is not something that helps their cause. To add some more statistical data, a 2 second delay in transaction leads to a whopping 87% shopping cart abandonment! That is a mighty big number which should get you scampering around getting delays fixed!
Competition benefits from your tardiness
E-commerce is a fiercely competitive sector. Businesses purchase ads that are in direct competition to their rivals search results. Page load times are crucial to netting the deal. It is seen that if page load times are anywhere close to uncomfortable, your competitor is lurking around to grab the opportunity. This opportunity is a big one, one that can determine your future in business. So, e-commerce sites need to ensure that they spend capital as well as good common sense and ensure that load times are lesser.
Gender sensitive e-commerce
70% of all the e-commerce traffic is female. We all know that women love shopping, and that is reflecting significantly in e-commerce profit margins. The inherent speed at which women shop is sometimes mind blowing. If women are not comfortable with the entire shopping experience that an e-commerce portal is offering them, they can and they will move on to other vendors. Pleasing them is a high and mighty task. Brand loyalty is lower in females and they do not think twice before switching vendors. This reason is enough to give you sleepless nights along with the plethora of choice they have waiting.
WANT TO INCREASE YOUR WEBSITE SPEED? CLICK HERE
What you can do to increase load speeds
1) Designing and developing a site may give you the thrill that makes digital business so exciting. Even so, concentrating on just the visceral look and feel is not going to cut it in today’s dog eat dog world of online business. Ensure that your coding is top class, test the crap out of your site, even though it means delaying the launch; you will be happy you did it.
2) SEO has changed. Content matters. All of these factors add up to the sum total. Ensure that you invest in good, strong and genuine content, which in turns allows your site to move up in SEO rankings.
3) Decrease the amount of pages while checking out. Keep it to the bare minimum. It is akin to having a self checkout or priority line at the super market. Consider each customer as your priority buyer and lay out the red carpet. Make it easy for them to check out and watch them return for more.
4) Flashy is not always good. Keep page elements to the minimum. We know that you can stuff in offers in every nook and corner of your site, but for the check out pages, do away with heavy java script and images. It reduces load times. Get the buyer to focus on buying and not on other offers which you think they should take.
E-commerce is heating up, quickly. Millions of dollars are being poured in through investments and other instruments, and that is because there is a substantial market opportunity there. As we have said always, treat your online presence just the way you would your offline. Keep it clean, clear and easy to use. It always trumps flashy.
If you are planning to run a massive campaign just like the one Flipkart did with the big billion day sale, please make sure that you have all your corners covered. Flipkart did make a killing that day and there are no illusions about it, but they have lost a huge number of veteran fans with sub-standard deals, below par delivery promises and more often than not- a crashed site.
