M-commerce loading times impact conversion rates

Monday, December 19, 2011 - 09:35 by Simon Crisp

The amount of time a mobile site takes to load on a consumer's smartphone will have an impact on their willingness to carry out safe shopping online with a particular retailer, according to a study.

Brocade has published findings, which suggest that the maximum waiting time most m-commerce users will endure is 20 seconds, after which time if a site has not loaded, they will look elsewhere.

This could be very important information for companies wanting to get the edge when it comes to capturing new customers who are taking advantage of their smartphone's web browsing capabilities, as they squeeze in some last minute safe shopping online this Christmas.

Eighty-six per cent of those questioned said that they would be doing a spot of online shopping from their portable device this year, whether it is a tablet computer or smartphone.

It seems that the survey has found that an increasingly significant proportion of the population are coming to expect excellent m-commerce experiences and if they are not satisfied in this respect, they will happily migrate to another retailer which can deliver a seamless mobile site.

Spokesperson, Manu Bonnassie, said that consumers were beginning to take to the idea of being able to shop for their much needed presents at any time of the day and so both network providers and the m-commerce sites which service consumers need to step up their game if they want to meet the growing demand for mobile shopping.

The most impatient 13 per cent of mobile users said that they would only wait five seconds for a site to load before browsing elsewhere. Meanwhile, 19 per cent of respondents said that they would be doubling the amount of time spent on m-commerce sites this year, when compared to the same period in 2010.