This from my friend Nick Bowmast at Flow…
The British have a reputation for patience, politely queuing for hours for the latest Playstation or the Kate Moss collection at Top Shop. But this patience does not extend to online activities, according to the results of a new survey.
According to results published by GBC on behalf of client PacketExchange, 70 per cent of British surfers would give a site less than 10 seconds to load before starting to search for an alternative, behaviour that is not mirrored offline.
In contrast to the virtual world, the nation of queuers were more than happy to wait up to 15 minutes in a nightclub or post office queue. Slow web pages weren’t the only pet peeve of the internet shopper, with poor web design (50.4 per cent) and crashing websites (52 per cent) [cited] as other annoying traits of their online experience.
Survey respondents didn’t just give up at the browsing stage. More than 70 per cent said that they had given up on a purchase at the checkout due to slow-loading pages. The results suggest that efficient service has more impact than brand or content when it comes to actually completing a sale online.
Full article here: http://www.nmk.co.uk/article/2007/05/30/count-of-ten