Keynote Systems recently published a new study saying that online retailers are getting good at designing visually appealing and easy-to-use home and product pages, but site performance is suffering.
“It was surprising to find that several of the sites had major load-related issues, a result of detailed page designs and did not easily facilitate the check-out process,” says Chris Loosley at Keynote. The checkout process was the worst offender.
It’s surprising that at a time when online retailing is out of its infancy stages, companies still don’t devote enough time to improving load time and the checkout process. Without a fast-loading, easy-to-understand checkout process, online retailers are preventing customers from buying.
For those of you considering changing the design of your site, perhaps the first thing to consider is the checkout process. It should be tested for load time and ease of use through usability studies, then improved.
