Poorly optimised websites and inferior online experience could cost UK retailer £10.6 billion in lost revenues in 2019, according to the latest research from Tribe.
Original research of 2,000 UK consumers in the ‘Preparing for perma-peak: The changing face of the trading calendar’ report revealed that on average UK shoppers abandon 10% of their total online shopping spend due to poor website performance, leaving UK retailers facing £10.6 billion in lost sales.
With 83% of consumers saying they would simply shop elsewhere if they experienced poor website performance, the biggest pain-point causing UK consumers to abandon a purchase was slow loading webpages for 37% shoppers.
This was followed by experiencing pages errors, such as receiving an Error 404 notification, and broken links for a further third (35%) and 28%, respectively.
79% of UK shoppers felt retailers could do more to make their websites easier to shop, with fast loading webpages (54%), smoother online checkout processes (52%) and better site navigation (48%) among the top improvements.
Deri Jones, CEO at Tribe, said: “In the era of digitally transformed retail, the highly-predictable calendar of predefined trading peaks of yesteryear looks increasingly antiquated. The very heartbeat of retail is now driven by customer demand, facilitated by real-time data analytics, low-latency digital networks and algorithm-driven micro-trends that can sweep a social network in nanoseconds.”
“The first challenge when preparing your website is to adopt a regime of always-on testing. Trading peaks can happen at any time, so websites need to be in a state of permanent readiness to ensure customer experience is upheld, customer loyalty remains uncompromised, and sales opportunities aren’t lost.”