Four out of five online shoppers give up on buying products online due to poor website performance. This leads to them switching off their computers, or worse still, going to buy from a competitor.

This phenomenon, dubbed ‘web rage’ by web testing specialist SciVisum which conducted the survey, can be caused by the inability to ask questions by phone (cited by 54 per cent of respondents), crashes during the transaction process (47 per cent), over-complicated registration processes (47 per cent), inability to find information (46 per cent) and being unable to amend orders (45 per cent).

There appears to be a distinct absence of customer loyalty when it comes to ecommerce websites, with less than half giving even their favourite website more than a second chance, before moving to a competitor, or taking the old-fashioned route down to the high street.

With 78 per cent of Brits shopping online and spending an average of £89 a month, those trading through their websites could be missing out on significant revenue by not focusing on optimising their website performance.

‘Web rage is a burgeoning online phenomenon,’ says Deri Jones, CEO, SciVisum. ‘With less than half of online shoppers prepared to give their favourite website more than two chances to get it right, the message to etailers is very clear. Online shoppers are showing zero tolerance to poor performance - and etailers must follow this lead if they're to avoid losing their customers to competitors or the high street.’

For more advice on trading online, see these articles:

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Top 10 Ecommerce Tips

Setting up Switch payments on your website

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