Mobify's 2017 Q2 Mobile Commerce Insights report confirms what most Web professionals should already know but which bears repeating anyway - websites that start fast and stay fast keep shoppers engaged and converting.
In addition to recommending/suggesting a new performance indicator called the "pre-bounce rate" ( which shows that many retailers are losing customers before the first page even loads) Mobify's mobile commerce report also provides a spotlight of beauty brand Lancome who improved its performance metrics with mobile engagement best practices and new mobile technologies including a Progressive Web App (PWA) and Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP).
Additional highlights of the study include:
+ Shoppers who experience longer load times have lower conversion rates: Users who convert spend 12.7% of their session waiting for pages to load, while users who don't convert spend 23.4% of their session waiting for pages to load.
+ Shoppers are dropping off (pre-bouncing) before the first page even loads: The average landing page takes 6 seconds to load; at 15 seconds the probability of pre-bounce increases 48%.
+ Slow load times lead to fewer pageviews: Cutting the load time down from 15 seconds to 5 seconds increases pageviews 21% for returning users and 16% for new users.
"Creating a website that starts fast and stays fast is clearly an important part of keeping shoppers engaged and converting," said Mobify CEO Igor Faletski. "These findings should help brands and retailers compare benchmarks from our large volume of mobile shopper data, monitor a metric they haven't considered before, and learn how to speed up their sites to increase engagement and conversions."
