01/03/2010

By Scott Thompson

Online retailers are potentially losing up to £5.65 billion per year in lost sales as customers abandon transactions due to poorly performing websites.

Research, released by Hostway and Zeus Technology, revealed that 82 per cent of consumers said that if a business' website performed badly it would dissuade them from buying goods from that organisation both online and in-store.

The survey of 2,033 consumers highlighted that on average they had abandoned 5.5 online transactions per person over the last 12 months. "Last year UK retail consumers spent £38 billion online, yet it is clear that many people still have frustrations when shopping online," says Neil Barton, director at Hostway. "The research revealed that over two thirds of the respondents were wasting on average up to two and a half days a year reloading or waiting for web pages to load properly. With many of today's websites containing a lot more multi-media content, it is important that consumers receive a good online experience otherwise they may simply abandon their transaction."

Many retailers have used online images and video to make their websites more attractive and interactive, but this has also led to them seeing more performance issues. Seventy per cent of those surveyed said they were frustrated by how long it takes many websites to load images, and by the start stop nature of multi-media web content. When asked what was the biggest user frustration when visiting websites, 'web pages taking too long to load' (46 per cent) was cited at the biggest complaint. This was followed by 'online advertising' (24 per cent), 'poor website navigation' (16 per cent) and 'bad web links' (13 per cent).

The majority of consumers believed customer loyalty should dictate the online experience they receive on certain websites. Seventy one per cent stated that, if they regularly purchase goods from a particular website, they should be rewarded with a better web experience than those people who are just browsing.