Poor Website Performance Undermines Customers Purchase Intent and Brand Impression

Transcription

1 Customer Research Report Poor Website Performance Undermines Customers Purchase Intent and Brand Impression by Chrissy Keeton with Kelly Coppinger and Amy Venable

2 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 speed matters. 2

3 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 published on the impact of website performance on abandon rates. What is less understood is the lasting impact of website performance on a customer s purchase intent and brand impression. We believed the impact would be significant and we leveraged the SingleStone Customer Research Lab to put our hypothesis to the test. We asked over 350 customers in three groups to navigate an ecommerce website. The website and instructions were identical, with the exception of page load times which were set at the following performance levels: High performance (no delay) Moderate performance (two-second delay) Poor performance (five-second delay) After exploring, configuring, and selecting a product, customers were asked a series of questions about their experience. The results were clear speed matters. Variants No Delay The Task 2 Sec Delay Select a specific phone cover Choose from 6 color options Pick from 4 patterns Review your experience 5 Sec Delay We found that: 35% of customers are less likely to purchase a product if the website performance is poor 66% of customers say website performance influences their impression of the company 33% of customers have a negative impression of a company with a poor performing website 3

4 The Findings Poor Performance = Lost Revenue We found that website performance significantly undermines a 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. Even a delay as little as two seconds resulted in a 13% reduction in a customer s appetite to buy. 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. How likely would you be to purchase a cell phone cover from the company? Lost revenue attributed to poor performance No Delay 2 Sec Delay 5 Sec Delay $22.76 $19.93 $18.30 Price (per unit) 73.5% 60.5% 47.5% Likelihood to Purchase $16.74 $12.05 $8.69 Revenue (per unit) % Revenue Loss 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

5 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 across all three dimensions. In the era of social media, this negative customer experience can have a lasting ripple effect. Brand Impre Revenue Experience Performance directly affects other key metrics sion The website loaded VERY slowly. This is the main reason that I rated the website negatively. 5-second delay participant 5

6 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: Identify critical customer touch-points across channels and prioritize for improvement Baseline the availability and response times for applications and transactions responsible for supporting the most important touch-points For the poorest performers, uncover the underlying root causes Identify options for improvement and quickly implement ones with the bestestimated return; Measure the results and adapt 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 factors are causing poor or inconsistent performance. It s particularly challenging to ensure a consistent customer experience across numerous technology touch-points. Traditionally, monitoring solutions are comprised of a plethora of technologies for monitoring various aspects of the infrastructure in a patchwork, bottoms-up fashion. When deployed, this patchwork approach means there s no holistic, end-to-end view of your customer s experience. Today s leading organizations are taking a different, more holistic approach, starting with understanding the desired customer experience and identifying critical customer touch-points. From there, they deploy a top-down, holistic monitoring approach that integrates various tools and processes. The result is a comprehensive monitoring solution that includes realtime customer experience dashboards designed for business stakeholders. This simple and intuitive design provides all stakeholders with deep insight into what s working well and areas for improvement. 5 Create a plan for sustained improvement and raise awareness about performance in your organization 6

7 Industry Case Study Situation Executives at a global insurance company faced a major problem. Their dynamic offer platform was suffering unexpected downtime. 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. While the company had systems-level monitoring in place, they lacked the ability to understand performance from the customer s perspective. When problems arose, they lacked the data and tools to quickly diagnose and resolve the problems. They also lacked proactive notification of performance problems and an underestanding of whether they were complying with established service level agreements. Result 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. The company implemented monitoring of key business transactions spanning a distributed ecosystem of applications with different technologies. In addition to proactive alerts for the production support team and deep-dive capabilities for the development teams, they created business-friendly dashboards so leaders have real-time visibility to performance of their online solution. The result was a quantum leap in proactive detection and resolution of problems impacting their customers. 7

8 About Our Study SingleStone surveyed 382 adults during the months of May and June Participants ranged in age from 18 to 74 with varying levels of education and household income. The results were measured with a 99% Connect with Chrissy Keeton phone: (804) ckeeton@singlestoneconsulting.com confidence level. About SingleStone 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 across all channels. The firm s CX strategy consulting Connect with us twitter.com/singlestonecx linkedin.com/company/19100 facebook.com/singlestoneconsulting 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: Copyright 2014 SingleStone All rights reserved.