Why Application Performance is vital to your business’ bottom line

As online applications are more frequently used by businesses and consumers alike, the need for a fast and efficient user-experience is becoming a vital aspect of overall business success. High application performance will ensure satisfied end users, which increases website visits and reduces abandon rates, resulting in increased conversion and sales.

If your site is not performing well, your bottom line will suffer – thus, it is becoming imperative for companies around the world to break ahead of their competitors by using the latest content delivery networks that can enable their applications to run efficiently.

A Slow Performing Application Can Cost Thousands of Pounds per Minute
When it comes to maximum expected load-time, what used to be known as the 7-second rule in the early 2000s could now be referred to as the 3 second rule. In fact, 47% of today’s consumers expect a site to load in less than 2 seconds. This means the amount of time internet users will give a page to load before closing their window has been cut in half over the past decade. Slow response times will almost guarantee a decline in website visits, and a loss of visibility could lead to a loss of sales.

According to a Gomez whitepaper, studies done by the Aberdeen Research Group reveals that a 1-second delay leads to a 7% reduction in conversions. For an ecommerce site that generates £65,927 of daily average revenue, a one second delay equals to a £1.6 million in lost revenues per year. Ensure you break free from latency issues limiting your profits by taking advantage of on-demand network acceleration services, which extend a company’s existing enterprise data centre or WAN. Such services accelerate content moving from an organisation's internal LAN or WAN for site-to-site and site-to-user connections when applications and content traverse the public internet on the way to their final destination.

Lower Conversion Rate
More evidence supporting the importance of application performance and load time was revealed when Google experimented with the idea of displaying 30 results per page against its standard 10 results. Google ran a test which brought back shocking results: a half-second difference in load time led to a 20% traffic decrease to the pages displayed in the 30 results. The bottom line is a slow site or slow page can hurt your business’s conversion rate.

SEO Impact
An August 2012 report shows there are 100 billion Google searches per month, therefore, appearing in these results is very important towards gaining traffic to your site. Page load time has proven effects on overall search visibility, as Google’s algorithm places weight on the site’s overall speed.

From the Business2Community post, “According to the Google Blog, faster sites “create happy users” and, “when a site responds slowly, visitors spend less time there.” Google is all about creating the best user experience, so they account for site loading speeds in their ranking system to improve search results. Although site speed doesn’t carry as much weight as relevancy, it’s still an important factor.”

Google is a part of everyday life for most internet users - Google search results present an opportunity to attract new customers while staying in front of existing ones.

Application Performance Matters
If you want to enable your company to break online barriers limiting its business potential, currently it is all about offering an exceptional customer experience - whether you are selling a product or a service, today's online consumers demand a rich, engaging and secure shopping experience from any e-commerce website. Online application acceleration enables an unparalleled end-user experience that is a vital component to a successful online strategy, leading to satisfied users who will likely stay loyal to your brand.