The Critical Impact of Internet Performance on Retail and Ecommerce

The Critical Impact of Internet Performance on Retail and Ecommerce

The retail stakes have never been higher.

Global markets are tantalisingly easy for retailers to reach thanks to the Internet, but they are, of course, equally accessible to both you and your competitors. And, what’s more, the global consumers you are reaching are increasingly demanding. They expect your ecommerce site to be available 24/7, and for its content to be served instantly.

To succeed you are going to need an edge.

Internet Performance is that edge, and it’s a critical edge indeed. Online every second really does count: those with their eyes on the prize must also have their eyes on the clock, because slow is the new downtime.

Internet consumers all over the world are ready to shop with you.

But they are also ready to shop elsewhere at the slightest sign of slow service from your site.

Let’s map the online opportunities, uncover the threats and reveal some solutions.

Charting the territories

A new survey from Dyn, the Internet Performance specialists, reveals just how important ecommerce is to global retail success, and it charts just how high global consumer expectations actually are.

The survey of more than 1,400 consumers across North America, EMEA and Asia Pacific helps retailers to understand just how large the online opportunity is and just how demanding the online communities of shoppers are.

The survey also suggests that your ‘loyal’ online customers may be much quicker to abandon your site, and fill their virtual baskets elsewhere, than you may imagine.

The global opportunity

The global online retail market is not just well established: it is also growing at a rapid rate.

According to eMarketer worldwide web sales will increase nearly 21% in 2015 to $1.592 trillion. Meanwhile Dyn’s survey found that at least 56% of global consumers intend to be spending more online this year than they did last year.

The survey also found that:

  • More than 90% of global consumers make at least 25% of their purchases online.
  • More than two-thirds of consumers shop online internationally.

The challenge of Internet Performance

These opportunities to reach this growing online market are also beset by challenges. In particular the survey reveals that global consumers have increasingly high expectations about Internet Performance.

To win the global prize retailers need to add a 6th P into the classic 5 P’s of retail marketing. It’s no longer just Product, Price, Place, Promotion and People: (Internet) Performance has entered the marketing mix as a critical component of retail success.

  • More than 85% of consumers expect the same quality and speed of performance when shopping on mobile devices as they do when shopping online.
  • Less than one-in-five consumers say that their international online shopping experiences currently exceed their expectations.
  • Nearly 65% of consumers are not willing to wait more than three seconds for a website to load, and half of these expect websites to load instantly.
  • A third of all consumers will abandon a website whose performance fails to meet their expectation.

What’s really interesting here is that it is the fastest growing international markets that are the most demanding: markets like India, China, Hong Kong and Malaysia do not suffer poor performance lightly. Their consumers are more likely to vote with their clicks and be purchasing elsewhere before you can even say “We need a managed DNS solution”.

The truth about Internet Performance and ecommerce

Consumers expect just as high standards from their online and mobile experiences as their in-store visits. Indeed, in many respects their expectations for mobile and online are even higher.

Consumers may be more accessible across the globe but the competition is fierce, and you are going to need every edge you can give yourself. Your competitors are only a click away and consumers will not wait around for answers or for pages to load.

It is Internet Performance that can give you the edge: it is critical to maintaining a consistently high customer experience.

It is no longer good enough to simply have the right product selection retailing at the right price. If the performance of your site lets you down then everything else is immaterial. In just three seconds you may have lost your customer to a competitor.

Similarly, you can forget throwing all that money at conversion rate optimisation if what is decimating your sales funnel is the performance of your site itself. Even the sleekest landing page isn’t going to help if it isn’t loading fast enough.

The performance solution

Internet Performance should not be confused with site performance. It’s not about on-page factors: it crucially goes beyond the performance of your own network.

Internet Performance is about how you control, manage and optimise your online infrastructure for an exceptional end-user experience, wherever the user may be geographically located and however they may be accessing your site.

And it’s critical that retailers get it right.

If retailers are going to satisfy their global consumers’ expectations their Internet Performance must be as good as their customer service, delivery network and product availability.

And it must be as good in each and every one of their markets.

Retailers must take control of the location of their Data Centre and CDNs by understanding exactly how their choice of these can minimise service interruptions, reduce costs and deliver the best possible online experience.

To do this you need intelligence and insight into Internet conditions. With slow being the new downtime you must be able to monitor performance 24/7 to ensure consistency across your markets and it’s essential that global customers have the same experience as your native customers.

Managed DNS from Dyn helps you to ensure you connect your visitors to your websites and applications in the location best positioned for the fastest performance.

And those who connect faster will convert better.

Sometimes performance is a balancing act. Retailers cannot afford to suffer crashes at times of high traffic. The recent experience of UK retailers adopting Black Friday sales tactics saw many high profile sites buckle under the weight of demand.

Dyn’s Traffic Director helps companies serve their online visitors across multiple endpoints, and make routing decisions based on real-time situations and events such as unexpected traffic peaks, outages or hijacks.

Companies such as Etsy, Groupon, Selfridges and Shutterstock rely on Dyn. And maximum uptime and performance gives them maximum sales.

Internet Performance gives retailers the edge in global retail markets. And that is critical.

Give yourself the edge

The stakes are high, and getting higher, for online retailers. A global audience has never been easier to reach, or easier to lose.

Internet Performance is critical in all regions, on all devices and at all times if the promise of global expansion is to be realised.

Because if you don’t realise it, someone else will.

To learn more about retail consumer expectations, download Dyn’s global survey report here

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