Shoppers are in more of a hurry than ever before, especially when it comes to mobile shopping. And the unfortunate reality for many retailers is that their online pages are just too slow for the mobile crowd.
That is one of the findings of the new Radware study, "2014 State of the Union: Mobile Ecommerce Performance," which looks at how consumers perceived their mobile shopping experience. The firm shared highlights of the new study in an email to FierceMobileIT.
"More consumers will be skipping the physical lines by shopping online this holiday season," notes Tammy Everts, senior researcher and performance evangelist for Radware.
"In this report, we are giving eRetailers a 'shoppers eye view' of how their pages perform for shoppers in real-world scenarios while on their desktop or on-the-go, as well as tips and techniques they can use to correct potential pains before the shopping season begins," Everts adds.
So what is the word on mobile commerce and the mobile shopping experience as we head toward Black Friday and Cyber Monday?
"The National Retail Federation predicts that U.S. retail sales this holiday may increase the most it has in three years (by 4.1 percent) and online sales are expected to grow between 8-11 percent over last season," Radware notes.
"In order to be able to meet increased sales demands, it's imperative for retailers to recognize that more than half (55 percent) of all time spent on retail sites takes place on a mobile device, making it crucial to deliver a fast mobile experience," it adds.
Unfortunately, the experience of users isn't quite up to expectations. The study finds that:
- While two out of three smartphone users say they expect pages to load in four seconds or less, among the top 100 retail websites, the median mobile (m-dot) page took 4.8 seconds to load on the iPhone 5s and seven seconds to load on the iPhone 4s.
- 20 percent of m-dot sites do not allow shoppers to access the full site.
- Despite the fact that most tablet users expect a full-site experience, many sites still serve the pared-down m-dot site to tablet shoppers.
But the picture above could change.
"As eCommerce sales are expected to hit an all-time high of $72 billion dollars, many eRetailers will refine strategies to attract and retain customer attention. Leveraging technologies such as geo-targeted campaigns and social shopping programs that include high-quality images and video, only those that offer optimized performance to enhance user experience will be the most successful," Radware explains.