Corporate website performance stuck in the 1990s: survey
- 22 May, 2013 15:18
Many companies are failing to quickly respond to website performance issues, leaving customers feeling like their online experience hasn’t improved since the first generation of websites in the mid-1990s, according to a survey by Vanson Bourne.
The research - commissioned by Micro Focus - found that 68 per cent of the 50 CIOs in surveyed in Australia and New Zealand, were not able to resolve a problem with their company websites before a customer became aware of it.
Most respondents said they would not wait more than an average of seven seconds for a website to load before abandoning it, but 22 to 34 per cent do not test how quickly their website and Web applications load on mobile devices.
When it comes to preparing for traffic peaks, half of CIOs don’t simulate website performance with heavy load testing.
The research said this is mostly due to “a communication breakdown between marketing and IT departments” as 74 per cent of CIOs are not given enough notice from marketing when they plan to launch an online campaign that will drive a lot of traffic.
Read CIOs’ relationship with marketing is weak: survey.
“Users have very little [luck] with poor performing websites today so these insights are pretty astonishing.
"Eighty-eight per cent of online visitors are less likely to return to a site after a bad experience so taking a passive approach to website performance is a massive risk to reputation, and for e-commerce sites, revenue too,” said Jeff Findlay, senior solution architect, APAC at Micro Focus.
“It just goes to show that a solid performing website is still a competitive advantage, and that any company delivering an equally good web experience on mobile is likely to win the customer retention and acquisition battle.
"With mobile users having very high expectations it is important to re-evaluate established service levels such that they reflect the market need and to test these against projected loads.”
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