22 August 2016

It’s no longer enough to invest serious amounts of money to ensure you have a useable, attractive online presence. These days, any web guru with the cheek to charge arm and leg money for a consultation will tell you that your website needs to boast a long shopping list of extra features.

From plug-ins facilitating social media and online chat functions to media-rich features to help you better display your vehicle stock in a good light, the once simple concept of a corporate web presence is now groaning under the weight of extra code. Still, it looks good, right? Well, it would if it was quick to load. 

And that’s the problem; with so much added functionality, there’s a real prospect that your prospective customers will go elsewhere. A recent study determined that the average customer’s patience ran out in three seconds. Yes, you read that correctly: three seconds. 

Not only are we now in an age of wanting purchases delivered to our door within the hour, but we’re apparently no longer willing to tolerate sluggish websites. Apparently the fault lies with all the various website widgets, not underlying broadband speeds. Which makes it doubly important to balance the need to retain eyeballs with the desire to attract them with flashy features. It would appear that you can’t have both.

Iain Dooley

Editor, Agenda

Auto Retail Network

Tags: browsing, customer experience, speed, website