Research shows that up to 57% of online consumers will abandon a website if they experience more than three seconds of delay due to load time. To compound the problem, nearly 80% of these potential customers might never return. More than half of U.S. online shoppers cite slow loading times as the primary reason for abandoning a purchase. The problem is so widespread that slow loading websites cost the U.S. e-commerce market an estimated $500 billion in lost revenue each year.

To avoid this issue in your e-commerce planning, strive to keep load times to a minimum, and always check load times when adding or updating content. Another vital consideration is being certain you have a reliable hosting service, since the right hosting can made a substantial difference in your site's responsiveness.

Make it as simple as possible for customers to locate what they need within your product database, and complete a sale. Businesses should also implement a solid mobile customer service platform, so people buying on mobile devices can obtain answers quickly, and can go through checkout with a system that will remember their information for future purchases.

The goal is for each step in your product search and checkout process to be seamless and intuitive. Speed and simplicity are key factors in e-commerce. For many consumers, products are assessed and the initial purchase judgments are made within as short a time span as 90 seconds.

Increasing the amount of overall traffic to your site is always an important goal, yet turning more of that site traffic into customers and leads ("conversion") is the perennial aim of e-commerce marketing. Your product presentation should be simple and focused, encouraging visitors to take action as a result of a clear, convincing message.

One effective technique to enhance conversion is the addition of videos. Product videos can have a measurable impact on increasing your sales, by helping site visitors understand your product, and overcoming any potential objections. According to Marketing Sherpa, site visitors are 64% more likely to purchase a specific product online after watching a site video.

Each product or service has a natural buying cycle, the process consumers are likely to go through before making a purchase. For example, the stages of a typical online buying cycle might be: browse-abandon or stop the process-consider once again-research and/or consult with friends/read reviews-browse once more-make the purchase. With so many product and site options, potential customers are often researching and comparison shopping in longer, more complex buying cycles.

When conducting your marketing research, learn as much as possible about the buying cycle norms for your company's products. Once you have that information, elements such as site design, email campaigns, newsletters, and content placement can be geared to proactively engage your audience.

Free tools such as Google Analytics can help you analyze a range of site statistics, fine tune your web site content, and monitor trends in new and returning visitors, referral sources and more. Timely e-commerce research is often available online at no charge, and it offers consistently useful insights. For example, research shows that 41% of shopping cart abandonments occur because consumers encounter hidden charges at checkout, and 53% of consumers say that low-cost shipping is a sufficient reason to change online retailers.

A general survey of online shoppers found that better pricing, more convenience, and time savings were important reasons for shopping online. When site shoppers were asked to identify the primary factors that influenced their online purchase, they said (shown in order of importance): Product quality and price, free shipping, easy returns, customer reviews, visual search features of the website, checkout ease, multiple product options, and new product availability. (See our Internet Research page for e-commerce statistics sources.)