If you have an e-commerce site, you probably already know the basic rules that govern your activity. “For a product to sell, it has to be accessible.” This principle guides your choices in terms of ergonomics, SEO, and marketing.
What if you add new data? “For a product to sell, it must be quickly accessible.”
Yes, speed it a key factor in optimizing conversion on an online store. Are you unimpressed? The figures we have compiled here will make you change your mind.
On the internet, time is money
Internet connection in France is improving every day. With access to high speed, fiber, people can now surf faster. Yes, but sites themselves have a tendency to become heavier. Adding jQuery, code for monitoring traffic, flash… several software components are used and these technologies have the annoying habit of making site performance heavier and delaying server response time. So what?
The user will wait a bit before seeing the page. If the site takes around 5 seconds to load (average time often mentioned), it does not change much. This is false. Note that Google saw that a slowdown of 4/10ths only in its search engine reduces the number of requests per day to 8 million [*]. At Amazon, 100 milliseconds of latency have an effect of 1% reduction in sales. Customers are not patient. They leave a site that takes too long to load, resulting in a decrease in the conversion rate and revenue. Is speed a parameter that can be overlooked? No.
Ode to speed
Let’s take the example of Walmart, the huge American retail chain. Noting that the company’s website used to load slower than its competition (such as eBay or Amazon), Walmart decided to do something about it. For each second gained in terms of loading, the conversion rate increased by 2%. For each improvement of 100 milliseconds, the revenues generated increased by 1% [**] (like Amazon).
Clearly, users abandon a page that takes too long to load (generally more than 4 seconds). Mobile users have more patience, but they also leave sites that take too long to load… The moral of the story: if you have a policy of continuous improvement that aims to increase conversion rates, the effectiveness of your SEO, and your revenue, it should be achieved by taking action over the speed of your e-commerce store!
[*] Figures available at http://www.globaldots.com/how-website-speed-affects-conversion-rates/