From a "Why, who cares" perspective website (and app) speed are highly correlated with conversion and engagement. Google's headline research on the subject says "Improving your load time by 0.1s can boost conversion rates by 8%." Some add'l data, sourced by Neilsen Group below: - Google found that increasing the load time of its SERPs by half a second resulted in a 20% higher bounce rate. - Google found 53% of mobile…
I used to work for a major e-commerce company and will back this up. The importance of performance, of course, depends on the use case. In e-commerce, the biggest factors (that come to mind) to compete on are—SEO and brand aside—price, offerings, and convenience. Convenience has two dimensions: UX and performance. If a user has a very clear idea of what they want from your site, they'll probably be patient. If a user…
If I'm spending an hour's pay on something I really want, of course I'll wait 10 seconds for the page to load, or if I can't get it to load at all, I'll make a note to try again later from different browser or internet connection. I'll manually enter my address details if they didn't auto-fill properly. I'll respond to emails on what I want to declare for customs, and various other efforts.
I, and people I know, feel like we buy very little on a whim. Is that unique? Are there whales who buy everything you can put in front of their face, or a different demographic who searches for something to buy and then changes their mind in precisely 850 milliseconds?
I would accept that like candy in the checkout lane, the profit is small but worth more than the extra effort it takes to put the offering there, but the revenue is small compared to the actual stuff people need to buy, but the analytics that suggest that hundreds of people click a link to your page but most close it faster than you can read the headline just seem unbelievable.