Poor Website Performance Undermines Customers` Purchase Intent
Transcription
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: [email protected] 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 twitter.com/SingleStoneCX linkedin.com/company/19100 facebook.com/SingleStoneConsulting 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. Copyright © 2014 SingleStone All rights reserved.