A 0.1 seconds improvement in site speed can lead to 10 percent growth in retail sales, according to new research.
The findings of the latest research report ‘Milliseconds make Millions’ reveal the dramatic impact of mobile site speeds on consumers’ willingness to spend money and engage with brands online.
The in-depth report was compiled by global data company fifty-five and Deloitte Digital, and commissioned by Google. It is based on 30 million user sessions on mobile websites of a variety of brands across a number of sectors.
Fifty-five analysed mobile site data from 37 brands from the retail, travel and luxury sectors across Europe, over a four-week period.
The results were surprising as a mere 0.1 second change in website load time can influence the next step of the user journey, ultimately affecting conversion rates.
The findings of three key sectors show:
Retail
Improvement in site speed of one millisecond across four site speed metrics made a striking increase, with consumers spending 9.2 percent more. The findings of 20.5 million sessions across 15 retail brands show that speed on product pages is essential, 3.2 percent increase from Product Listing Page to Product Detail Page and a 9.1 percent increase in progressing to Add to Basket.
Luxury
The data shows that luxury consumers seem to be the most sensitive to speed improvements. The clicks to key pages (e.g. “Contact Us”) are majorly increased, by staggering 20.6 percent, when the key site speed was improved by 0.1 seconds. There was also a 40.1 percent increase in users moving from product detail to add to basket and resulting in overall longer sessions. These findings are based on 2.1 million user sessions across 10 luxury brands.
Travel
The findings based on 7.4 million user sessions across six brands showed steady growth, culminating in a 2.2 increase in check-out completion.
Richard Wheaton, Managing Director at fifty-five London comments: “As the most comprehensive site speed research report ever completed, this is a wake-up call to brands to adopt a mobile-first mentality. The benchmarks we’ve created in this report will help brands move beyond being inwardly focused, and identify wider measures of performance that may be putting themselves ahead or behind their competitors. Brands really need to re-think their digital processes and KPIs in this mobile-first world, to ensure that site design and technical enhancements are generating the positive ROI, and not actually unintentionally harming sales by driving customers away.”