In my first (published in 2002) academic paper called "The 4S Web Marketing Mix" I argued that one of the success factors of E-Commerce web sites is the site download speed, as part of the S(ite) or Web Experience element (The paper is also included in the book at the right ). After almost a decade I am surprised to find out that the web site download speed is still an issue for many online retailers. Since that paper was published not many things have changed obviously and still many online retailers operate slow loading web sites. For these Internet vendors the news are grim: A study conducted by Forrester on behalf of AKAMAI Technologies titled E-Commerce Web Site Performance Today indicates that 47 % of online customers expect an ecommerce page to load in 2 (yes two!) seconds or less!! It also indicates a close link between the Web Site Performance and a consumer's loyalty to an E-Commerce site. A summary of the study
A piece of advice to ambitious Web 2.0 / Social Media marketers: Have a good look first to your (Web 1.0) web site before you start creating online communities and launch crowdsourcing initiatives. The chance is that many of your web site customers will run away when they discover that your web site performs like a locomotive in the era of supersonic flying. Customers have many alternatives today and become more and more critical. Some online marketers have not realized this yet and they should be worried about this. Maybe they would get even more worried if they knew how long it takes for a site visitor to form an opinion about the quality of a web site! For those interested I have a good article.
