Compuware Gomez Survey Says Consumers Quickly Quit Slow Web Sites

Gomez, the Web performance division of Detroit-based Compuware Corp. (Nasdaq: CPWR), has published the findings of a survey that shows a significant portion of United States consumers will quickly abandon Web sites that perform slowly.

With nearly a third of consumers stating they would start abandoning slow sites between one and five seconds, the survey findings offer an end-user perspective of the potential impact of Net Neutrality regulations and the importance of speed for all web businesses.

The independent survey, "When Seconds Count," was conducted for Gomez by Equation Research and queried 1,004 web and mobile users.

* Nearly one-third (32 percent) of consumers will start abandoning slow sites between one and five seconds.
* 84 percent are only willing to try a slow performing site a few times before giving up.
* 39 percent say speed is more important than functionality for most Web sites, while only one in five rank greater site functionality as more important.

Speed also makes a difference when it comes to accessing a mobile site. The details:

* A third of all web users are also using a mobile device to access the Internet.
* More than half of mobile users expect websites to load as quickly, almost as quickly or faster on their mobile phone, compared to the computer they use at home.

Also, slow load times are common and users feel frustrated with poor performance:

* Two thirds (67 percent) of users encounter a slow performing Web site a few times a week or more.
* More than a third (37 percent) said they would not return to a slow site, and 27 percent would likely jump to a competitor's site. 

For mobile web users, slow website load times and poor formatting are the top two issues encountered on the mobile web.

Web users have visited sites and not been unable to accomplish their tasks. More than 80 percent of users say they have been unable to accomplish their tasks – such as completing a purchase or a financial transaction – on a specific website at least once. And nearly half (47 percent) say they have frequently abandoned sites where they couldn't finish their tasks in the past three months.

"When Web users encounter Web or mobile site performance problems, their patience and loyalty run thin," said Matt Poepsel, vice president of performance strategies at Gomez. "However, many companies fail to realize that seconds really do count because their customers refer to best-in-class web performers like Facebook, Google and Yahoo as a measuring stick or standard for determining how fast all sites should be."

Gomez retained Equation Research to conduct this survey. Interviews of 1,004 mobile web and mobile users were conducted between June 25 and June 29, 2010. To download and read the full survey findings, please go to http://bit.ly/aIQfsw.

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