Surfers only have 2 seconds

Web shops should make sure their page loads fast, because new research , conducted for Akamai amongst 1048 American Internet users, has revealed that users expect a page to have loaded in 2 seconds. During a similar study performed in 2006, users were still prepared to wait for 4 seconds. To be precise, 47% of respondents expect the site to have loaded in 2 seconds or less. 40% even said that they do not wait for more than 3 seconds before they navigate away from the site.

If you make the customer wait for too long, he will become restless. 14% will immediately take their business to another shopping site and 23% will abort their visit or leave the computer altogether. 39% start another task on their computer and their focus on shopping is thus disrupted. When a customer becomes restless on account of long waiting times, it is highly probable that you will lose a sale.

Worse even, this frustration is not temporary, but will also affect the reputation of your store. 69% of dissatisfied online shoppers have declared to be less inclined to make future purchases at said web shop, which is 17% more than in the 2006 study. This leads to a negative perception of the company with 46% of online shoppers, and 44% talk about this negative experience with their family and friends. The negative consequences are also present with users who perform online research and then purchase the product in a brick store: 27% will not make this purchase if the website loads too slowly.
This impatience is of course a direct consequence of the ever increasing integration of broadband. And since 62% of Belgian and 85% of Dutch web surfers already have a broadband connection, this impatience will undoubtedly also influence their decisions.