Poor Website Performance Undermines Customers` Purchase Intent

Customer Research Report
Poor Website Performance
Undermines Customers’ Purchase
Intent and Brand Impression
by Chrissy Keeton
with Kelly Coppinger and Amy Venable
We measured how customers
respond to varying levels of
performance and found that
speed matters.
We measured how customers
respond to varying levels of
performance and found that
2
speed matters.
Research Summary
These days, customers expect to move
through a website quickly and with ease;
however, many websites fail to perform
consistently. What happens when customers
have to wait for a page to load?
The Study
Participants
382
participants divided into 3 groups
Much research has been
and instructions were identical,
published on the impact of
with the exception of page load
website performance on
times which were set at the
abandon rates. What is less
following performance levels:
Variants
No
Delay
2
Sec Delay
5
Sec Delay
understood is the lasting impact
of website performance on a
customer’s purchase intent and
brand impression.
• High performance
(no delay)
• Moderate performance
(two-second delay)
We believed the impact would
be significant and we leveraged
The Task
Select a specific
phone cover
• Poor performance
(five-second delay)
the SingleStone Customer
Research Lab to put our
After exploring, configuring,
hypothesis to the test.
and selecting a product,
customers were asked a series
We asked over 350 customers
of questions about their
in three groups to navigate an
experience. The results were
ecommerce website. The website
clear—speed matters.
Choose from
6 color options
Pick from
4 patterns
Review your
experience
We found that:
35%
66%
33%
of customers
of customers
of customers
are less likely to purchase
have a negative impression
a product if the website
say website performance
influences their impression
performance is poor
of the company
a poor performing website
of a company with
3
The Findings
Poor Performance = Lost Revenue
We found that website performance
significantly undermines a
How likely would you be to purchase a cell
phone cover from the company?
customer’s willingness to purchase
a product. 86% of customers
experiencing a website with no
delay were likely to purchase
the product versus 45% of those
experiencing a five second delay.
Lost revenue attributed to poor performance
Even a delay as little as two seconds
No Delay
2 Sec Delay
5 Sec Delay
resulted in a 13% reduction in a
$22.76
$19.93
$18.30
Price (per unit)
customer’s appetite to buy.
73.5%
60.5%
47.5%
Likelihood to Purchase
$16.74
$12.05
$8.69
Revenue (per unit)
During the survey, we asked
customers to indicate how much
they would pay for the product.
When we applied this dollar amount
and the customers’ likelihood
to purchase, the result is a 48%
reduction in revenue between
the high and poor performing
website. This is a significant loss
that should raise eyebrows in
marketing and IT departments alike.
“The lag on the website
made it very difficult to go
through the process of
choosing the customized
option I would want.”
— 5-second delay participant
4
% Revenue Loss
The Findings
Poor Performance = Negative Brand Impression
How would you evaluate the following aspects
of the company?
Not only is a customer less
likely to purchase a product on
a poor performing website, but
the experience also negatively
influences the customer’s
impression of the company.
We found a 24% reduction in
a customer’s impression of a
company between the high and
poor performing websites.
To understand the impact to
impression in more detail, we
captured feedback in three key
areas: quality, trustworthiness,
and customer service. The
response was consistent across
the board—customers
experiencing a poor performing
website rated the company lower
customer experience can have a
e
Im
era of social media, this negative
es
pr
Ex
d
Re
v
u
en
Bra
n
across all three dimensions. In the
rie
n
e
nc
Performance
directly affects
other key metrics
sio
pe
lasting ripple effect.
“The website loaded VERY
slowly. This is the main
reason that I rated the
website negatively.”
— 5-second delay participant
5
Challenges and Action Steps
Improve Application
Performance
If you think application
performance may be negatively
impacting your company’s brand
or limiting revenue potential, here
is an actionable improvement plan:
1
There are many factors that influence
application performance, from
domain complexity and architecture
to code quality and infrastructure
scalability.
It’s often hard to pinpoint what
Today’s leading organizations
Identify critical customer
factors are causing poor or
are taking a different, more
touch-points across channels
inconsistent performance. It’s
holistic approach, starting with
and prioritize for improvement
particularly challenging to
understanding the desired
ensure a consistent customer
customer experience and
experience across numerous
identifying critical customer
technology touch-points.
touch-points. From there,
the availability
2 Baseline
and response times for
applications and transactions
responsible for supporting the
Traditionally, monitoring
holistic monitoring approach
most important touch-points
solutions are comprised of a
that integrates various tools
plethora of technologies for
and processes. The result is
monitoring various aspects of
a comprehensive monitoring
the infrastructure in a patchwork,
solution that includes real-
bottoms-up fashion. When
time customer experience
deployed, this patchwork
dashboards designed for business
approach means there’s no
stakeholders. This simple and
holistic, end-to-end view of your
intuitive design provides all
customer’s experience.
stakeholders with deep insight
the poorest performers,
3 For
uncover the underlying root
causes
options for
4 Identify
improvement and quickly
implement ones with the bestestimated return; Measure the
into what’s working well and
results and adapt
areas for improvement.
a plan for sustained
5 Create
improvement and raise
awareness about performance
in your organization
6
they deploy a top-down,
Industry Case Study
Situation
Result
Executives at a global insurance
company faced a major problem.
Their dynamic offer platform was
suffering unexpected downtime.
The executives chose to take a
fresh approach to monitoring.
Rather than spending more on
systems monitoring, they instead
invested in a holistic customercentric approach to monitoring
the key transactions that impact
customer experience.
This was not only resulting in significant revenue
loss, it was also negatively impacting the company’s
brand reputation with its partners. Often partners
would notify the company of outages of which they
were not aware.
The company implemented monitoring of key business
While the company had systems-level monitoring
transactions spanning a distributed ecosystem of
in place, they lacked the ability to understand
applications with different technologies.
performance from the customer’s perspective. When
problems arose, they lacked the data and tools to
In addition to proactive alerts for the production
quickly diagnose and resolve the problems. They
support team and deep-dive capabilities for the
also lacked proactive notification of performance
development teams, they created business-friendly
problems and an underestanding of whether they were
dashboards so leaders have real-time visibility to
complying with established service level agreements.
performance of their online solution. The result was a
quantum leap in proactive detection and resolution of
problems impacting their customers.
7
About Our Study
Connect with Chrissy Keeton
SingleStone surveyed 382 adults during the months of
phone:
(804) 873-6146
email:
ckeeton@singlestoneconsulting.com
May and June 2014. Participants ranged in age from 18
to 74 with varying levels of education and household
income. The results were measured with a 99%
confidence level.
About SingleStone
Connect with us
Founded in 1997, SingleStone is a Richmond, Va.-based
consulting firm that specializes in Customer Experience
(CX) solutions spanning strategy, culture, process, and
technology. SingleStone provides a full complement of
expertise to design and implement delightful customer
experiences through the full customer lifecycle and
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across all channels. The firm’s CX strategy consulting
is grounded in real-world implementation experience,
a pragmatic ingredient that promotes more effective
and sustainable outcomes. SingleStone’s solutions
drive improved customer attraction and retention, and
ultimately top and bottom-line business growth for its
clients. For more information, visit:
www.singlestoneconsulting.com.
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All rights reserved.