Dive Brief:

• More than half of online shoppers said they would choose to shop elsewhere if a website took too long to load, according to a survey conducted by Contentsquare released Tuesday. The digital experience analytics platform surveyed nearly 650 U.S. consumers in November.
• Slow website loading times was the top pain point reported by consumers shopping during the holidays, followed by excessive pop-ups and unavailable items. Consumers also listed as pet peeves the absence of quick-purchase checkout options (such as Apple Pay or PayPal), sites with poor search results, sites not configured for mobile and promotions that don’t work.
• “Ease of shopping and reduced annoyances are critical for online consumers,” said John O’Melia, chief customer officer at Contentsquare. “Retailers that ignore slow loading times, misuse pop-ups, promote out of stock items, and have inconvenient payment options do so at the risk of losing a significant amount of customers and sales.”

Dive Insight:

With Black Friday around the corner, businesses are courting customers with deals, promotions and ads.

But a pain point here or there can be the difference between a transaction and yet another online cart abandoned. Digital experiences need to be smooth.

“We’ve seen from internal data that while cart abandonment is lower during the holidays than at other times of the year, the high occurrence of ‘rage clicking’ indicates shoppers are also more frustrated during the holidays, even when shopping online,” O’Melia said.

More than a third of shoppers said they'd reconsider a holiday purchase if they reached a checkout page the promotion they were going to use doesn’t work. 

Another quarter of consumers said they’d be deterred by no free shipping. And 15% said they have left a checkout page because it was either too slow or crashed.

Consumers’ online shopping increases greatly during the holiday season. Contentsquare’s Benchmark 2022 holiday analysis found an increase in daily traffic by 67%, with mobile shopping increasing to make up over three-quarters of online traffic.

“With many people still working from home, the ability to browse and shop online, as well as pick and choose how to obtain items, is much easier for consumers — and makes it that much tougher for retailers,” said Jill Standish, global retail lead at Accenture. “Having a handle on inventory and the surety of supply will matter to both the consumer and the retailer.”

Consumers’ experience greatly impacts their likelihood of recommending a brand, Contentsquare found. More than half of customers with positive experiences have recommended a brand’s website or app, while 1 in 10 have discouraged others from online shopping at a brand based on negative experiences.