Is Your Client's Online Experience Scaring 85% of Customers Away?

BY Rachel Cagle
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How would you guess your customers rate their experience on your client’s website? If you guess a high score, unfortunately, you’re probably wrong. According to Contentsquare’s 2022 Digital Experience Benchmark Report, 85% of consumers aren’t happy with the experiences they have shopping online. So, if your clients want to boost sales, they HAVE TO focus on their customers’ online experience.

Why Consumer’s Online Experience is Important

According to Contentsquare’s data, online traffic has increased by about two billion sessions per month for all industries between 2020 and 2021. The pandemic may have influenced the rise in online shopping, but data shows that the new habits are here to stay. Making sure your client’s site gives visitors the best online experience is important because “51% of website traffic is made up of returning users,” says Contentsquare. If your client’s website doesn’t provide a good experience, your clients will miss out on potential repeat customers. You don’t want to cut in on roughly half of their traffic.

Pay Attention to Where Consumers Bounce

50% of consumers who visit websites tend to give up on the site after viewing only one page, reports Contentsquare. This may seem concerning, but it all depends on what page they’re viewing. If they’re looking at a single-​page site (like a blog or other informative asset), the bounce rate is fine. However, if they’re bouncing off your client’s homepage, that doesn’t reflect well on their online experience. When that happens, Contentsquare recommends asking:

  • Is the website design confusing? On average, consumers spend about 55 seconds on each webpage they visit. Is that enough time for your client’s customers to easily locate what they’re looking for on the homepage?
  • Are users unsure where to click? If your client’s website design doesn’t make it completely clear where each button leads to, consumers aren’t going to take a lot of time to figure it out. They’ll just find another, easier-​to-​use website.
  • Is the website working properly? Load times are a huge issue that businesses must address. When consumers visit a site on a desktop computer, they wait about 1.61 seconds for a page to load. If it doesn’t load in that time, they bounce. And on a mobile device, that wait time is even shorter: 1.52 seconds. Overall, a one-​second delay in page load time results in a 16% decrease in customer satisfaction. So, to improve consumers’ online experience, make sure load times are as fast as possible.

Do You Give Customers What They Need to Make Purchases?

Part of a good online experience is making consumers feel comfortable in their purchase decisions. That means providing them with all the information they need to make a purchase. Consumers like to do research before they make purchases, especially when shopping online. (Check out your client’s target audience’s profile on AudienceSCAN on AdMall by SalesFuel to get an exact percentage.) So, it makes sense that Contentsquare found that consumers visit more pages when they’re making online purchases:

  • Average Page Views When Browsing: 3–7
  • Average Page Views with an Intent to Buy: 9–31

This means that you need to offer your client’s potential customers plenty of information on their products/​services. Buying session last an average of 15 minutes and five seconds. So, you have that much time to win them over with pages that hold useful content such as:

  • Customer reviews
  • Blog posts
  • Videos
  • Long-​form assets (such as white papers and technical briefs)

Consumers shouldn’t be bombarded with this information when they first visit your client’s site, but it should be easy for them to find. If your client’s website information can make a customer confident in their buying decision, that’s a truly great online experience.

Photo by Mimi Thian


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