Is your Web site killing your brand? - Internet Performance als Erfolgsfaktor in Onlineshops

Is your Web site killing your brand? by William Agush, VP Marketing, Gomez Sixteen thousand three hundred seventy-seven dollars per minute. That’s the revenue Amazon.com generates online. For Dell, it’s $7,289. For Wal-Mart it’s $2,025. This revenue, of course, flows only when these Web sites are up, which is the vast majority of the time. When they’re down, this money goes out the window. What many fail to realize is that a lot more than this revenue hinges on Web site performance. Downtime, inconsistency, slowdowns and bad design don’t just scuttle purchases; they can ruin customer experiences and create lasting harm. The customer experience via the Web is often the only differentiator a company has to offer in an increasingly commoditized global marketplace. Let’s walk through a fictional example. What happens if, say, Bookstore.com’s site hangs when customers are halfway through a transaction? Right off the bat, Bookstore.com loses a few hundred sales and some of the $500 it generates every minute in revenue. More ominously, the jilted customers are very likely to turn to Bookstore.com’s rival, Readlots.com. If that site lets them buy their books, and buy them swiftly, the orphaned customers are likely to dump Bookstore.com for good. Because of the superior experience at Readlots.com, their brand loyalty has shifted. They may even find themselves visiting Readlots’ real-world store, giving Bookstore.com’s archrival more opportunities to solidify the relationship with its new customer. In this hypothetical, Bookstore.com lost much more than one minute of revenue. It lost a cadre of customers for a lifetime, representing years of purchases and untold thousands of dollars in revenue. On top of that, Bookstore.com’s alienated customers are likely to tell friends, family and fellow book group members of their new preference in bookselling sites, creating a potential cascade of customer flight. By providing an inferior Web experience, Bookstore.com put its entire brand at risk and suffered irreparable damage to it. The few hundred dollars lost in the single moment of downtime is a drop in the bucket. The potential loss has become millions. That’s why brand is everything, and why Web performance matters. Here are some real-life examples where Web site problems seriously undermined the brands involved: The official World Cup soccer Web site crashed in February 2006 just as soon as it started to sell tickets for this summer’s finals. The site, which represents some of the toughest athletes in the world, revealed its weak side. Hallmark’s Web site crashed multiple times on Valentine’s Day 2006. For those who cared enough to send the very best, the best was sub par. When tickets for Rolling Stones performances in New Zealand went on sale in March 2006, a key ticket merchant’s Web site crashed. Loyal fans of the world’s most enduring rockers suddenly couldn’t get no satisfaction. Given that brand equity is in the balance, Web site performance is, or should be, a strategic consideration for every company. This includes companies that use the Web to reduce costs, such as financial institutions that offer online banking. It includes manufacturers that use the Web to run efficient supply chains and that rely on the loyalty of their Web-connected distributors and partners. It includes wholesalers like insurance carriers who use the Web to connect to independent agents who resell their policies. It even applies, very much, to companies that use the Web merely as their online marketing presence. Consider a software company that touts itself as “provider of the fastest, most agile and most reliable software for performing (X business activity).” If the company’s Web site is slow, unavailable, inconsistent and generally clunky, that fact speaks volumes about what customers might expect from that company’s software. If the Web site is bad, how can their software be so good? If the online experience is a pain, how could the company’s tech support relieve their headaches? Regardless of the actual quality of the software the company is selling, the company’s Web performance is quietly snuffing the life out of the brand. The company may never even know it. Organizations need to change the way they think about Web performance. Many companies still believe this about their Web sites: “If we build it, they will come.” They may indeed come, but what will happen when they get there? Will they be delighted or alienated? Will they return? Is your Web site worth their trouble? A Web site is like a stack of poker chips. It gets you in the game but hardly ensures success. The power is with the consumer now, and brand owners need to hold on tight. What’s missing in too many companies is an essential performance culture. One that spans IT and line of business people. One that gauges Web performance from outside the firewall as well as inside, and one that sees problems coming long before they arise. One that measures a company’s Web performance in all geographies against all competitors. And one that doesn’t forsake the 40 percent of consumers still using dial-up. Companies need to build a performance culture now because a lot is at risk: Revenue. Customers. Their brand. Their business. What else is there? About Gomez Gomez is the leading provider of web application experience management solutions. Used by more than 750 companies worldwide, including eight of the top 10 most visited sites, six of the top 10 retailers, nine of the top 10 financial services firms, five of the top 10 social networking companies, and four of the top 10 industrial companies, Gomez’s services, delivered in a software as a service (SaaS) subscription model, help companies ensure superior online experiences that satisfy customers, enhance brands and drive profits. Founded in 1997, Gomez provides the industry’s only complete solution for managing web application experience from development through deployment and the entire application life cycle, featuring active monitoring, competitive benchmarking, and more than 12,000 data sources worldwide. Gomez is Network Computing magazine’s “Editor's Choice” for best Internet performance monitoring service. For more information, please visit www.gomez.com