CONSUMER FIRST

In e-commerce, consumer decision-making, more often than not, starts with Google – in which the consumer researches a product prior to purchase. Get to the top of a Google search page for your product/service category, beat your competition and your brand will automatically top of the consumer’s browsing list, giving your small business a better chance of ending up in that digital basket.

This is not as simple as it seems. A good place to start is having a good product first and foremost, that is bought frequently with strong ratings and reviews.

A slow website has a negative impact of a user experience. Quicker website perform better when it comes to conversion rates, average order values, and even page views. *

1. Faster sites mean more customers will reach checkout. Improving site speed increases progression rates on almost every step of the mobile purchase journey — from the homepage to the checkout — for the majority of brands.

2. Faster sites encourage people to stay longer and purchase more. Decreasing mobile site load times by just one tenth of a second resulted in major performance gains. Specifically, conversion rates went up by 8.4% for retail and 10.1% for travel. In retail alone, the average order value grew by 9.2%, while luxury sites saw an 8% rise in page views per session.

3. Faster sites have lower bounce rates. A mobile speed improvement of just 0.1 second for an informational page decreased bounce rate by 8.3% for 1 in 2 lead generation sites.

Businesses need to prioritize a user-first culture to see the benefits of improving site speed. Today’s users are looking to mobile. Here are some tips:

1. Start by understanding your mobile page speed by using tools like Test My Site.
2. Use Test My Site to see how your mobile site stacks up to your competitors.
3. Make mobile speed a priority and to allocate the necessary resources.
4. Track your site speed and link it to your analytics data to see the impact of speed improvements. 

Marketing that shows how a product or service can enable life to continue and enrich it will connect better with your customers. Aim to achieve a human connection, focusing on friends, family, local places or the community. Focus on people rather than things.

* Milliseconds Make Millions by Deloitte