In e-commerce, customers are fought over for seconds

How long does it take for an e-commerce site to discourage a customer? 47 percent of Internet users expect a store's website to load in a maximum of two seconds, and 40 percent will leave if it takes three to four seconds. In e-commerce, the battle for a customer's attention is already taking place in time counted to several decimal places.

As Skilled's analysis shows, e-commerce conversion is directly linked to the loading speed of e-commerce sites. The analysis of twelve case studies found that nearly half of customers expect a site to load within two seconds. Mobile users are more forgiving. 64 percent of them will wait four seconds. Stores can lose more than just traffic. As the study shows, one second of slower site turn-on means 7 percent fewer conversions.

- The professionalization of e-commerce is influencing the increasingly exorbitant performance standards of e-commerce stores. Page loading time is now a battle of milliseconds for stores. That is why we are constantly working on the efficiency of the Shoper platform code," says Jacek Zientkiewicz, Brand Manager of the Shoper Platform .

What happens when pages take a long time to load? If it takes six seconds, it might as well take sixteen - conversion is then almost identically poor. The impatience of the audience is understood by Google, which has defined a page startup of less than three seconds as a best practice and a ranking factor for position in search results.

How to speed up

Many factors affect when a user sees a site - from the design of the site to its communication with the server. In the case of stores based on open source software, it is necessary to hire a programmer who knows the source code of the solution to speed up the site. Often, he or she has to correct what were less important when "putting up" the store, but have become more important as the technology has developed.

IT infrastructure or the capabilities of the server itself are also important. Speed is affected here, for example, by the amount of customer traffic or the number of products. Each assortment expansion and sales peak increase the server load. - In SaaS-based stores, it is the program provider who is responsible for the technical background and fast loading of the site regardless of its size. It is much easier for the developer to optimize the code because he knows it inside out. It will also do it faster and cheaper. It's an activity that is done on an ongoing basis," adds Zientkiewicz.

The difference in the performance of the e-shop after the acceleration is dramatic. The stability of the servers and faster page loading resulted in about 50-80 percent fewer rejections especially during sales peaks. Not just big ones like holidays or major promotions, but even during the week, from Sunday to Monday. It's very important for an e-store that the customer doesn't have to wait for content to load," says Rafal Pulchny, owner of Drogerix.pl

Good conversion is a lot of factors

A customer visiting the site should quickly find the goods he or she is looking for. However, intuitive navigation is not everything - easy checkout and various forms of payment are also important. - Trends, technological guidelines and customer expectations change almost overnight. In e-commerce, many factors influence the growth of a store. Store owners want to be sure that the software will take them all into account, in addition to "growing" along with their business. This can only be ensured by optimized code and a large enough IT architecture. A change in traffic by several hundred percent, which happens, for example, on Black Friday, is an opportunity for a store to make good sales. It should not be squandered by slow loading of the site," concludes Zientkiewicz.