day 30 per cent of customers expect a one second or less page load, while nearly one in five (18 per cent) expect pages to load instantly. Each additional second after two seconds of load time can decrease sale conversion by seven per cent. Regardless of which device they are using, Akamai chief strategist of commerce, Jason Miller, said customers expect pages to load instantly. The report’s insights were sourced from Akamai’s 2014 Consumer Web Performance Expectations Survey. The expectation for instant page load was the most significant performance development from Akamai’s previous survey on the matter, conducted in 2009. In the 2009 survey, instant page load wasn’t only not top of mind – it wasn’t even included as a survey option. This is indicative of just how rapidly both technology and customer expectations are evolving. “One of the biggest things that retailers need to do is focus on the overall customer experience,” Miller told Inside Retail PREMIUM. “Interestingly, mobile is really driving that.” In its latest Mobility Report (June 2015), Ericsson projected that smartphone subscriptions would increase by an average of 15 per cent a year through to 2020, resulting in 6.1 billion smartphone subscriptions globally. In 2009, 16 per cent of internet users made purchases on their mobile devices at some point during the year. In 2014, 40 per cent of internet users purchased a product or service on their mobile device in the three months prior to the survey, an increase of 2.5 times, in one quarter of the time. In order to provide mobile shoppers with satisfying online experiences, considerable improvements need to be made, Miller said. Among all e-commerce consumers, mobile users reported the greatest number of dissatisfying experiences – that is, slow site speeds or unavailability, which includes crashing, freezing, and error pages. Of mobile users, 39 per cent reported dissatisfying experiences, compared to 35 per cent on tablet and 25 per cent on desktop. Such experiences impacted on online shoppers’ device preferences — with only nine per cent preferring mobile for online shopping, compared to 76 per cent who preferred desktop. Mobile was also seen as the slowest device for e-commerce activity by 76 per cent of respondents, while 85 per cent considered desktop the fastest, or as fast as, other devices. Device domination? What’s significant for retailers from the Akamai research is that, while desktop may appear to dominate e-commerce, consumer engagement is highest – in frequency and spending – on mobile and tablet. Mobile and tablet shoppers purchase more often and spend more money than desktop shoppers, the report found. At least once a week, 35 per cent buy products compared to only 15 per cent of desktop users. In addition, mobile and tablet users research products in retail stores and buy online (showrooming) at a 13 per cent higher rate than those on desktop, and research products online and buy in stores (webrooming) at an 11 per cent higher rate. The report also found that desktop users are being outspent by mobile and tablet users by $64-$71 a month, or $768-$852 a year per shopper. Furthermore, both mobile and tablet shoppers are twice as likely to make purchases of $250 or more than desktop shoppers. As mobile builds up to be the moneymaker, retailers need to address its challenges and increasing consumer demands. If shoppers have a bad experience, around 50 per cent will abandon the site. And of those, one in five users won’t ever return to that site. “They will go to your competitors,” Miller pointed out. “So one of the ways that I always look at that is – when you talk about your site being a great customer experience, and loading fast and loading on the device properly, you’ve got to imagine that you’re only one back-button click away from the user going back to Google and going to your competitor.” This impact is significant, even for sites that may not have a high level of mobile conversion, where part of the shopper research, or search, is through mobile. “If the site isn’t mobile friendly, it’s still really going to be losing out on a lot of sales,” Miller added. To help avoid this, retailers need to ensure their site supports technology that includes responsive design – meaning images and text are fluid and adapt easily to fit different devices. “’Customer experience’ is probably the biggest buzz word and focus you’ll hear in retail now,” Miller emphasised. “If you don’t have responsive design, the users – when they are trying to interact and research, sitting on the train on their phone – are going to have to do the ‘pinch and zoom’ on your desktop site. It’s those user frustration points that make for a poor experience.”