E-commerce sites: You have 2 seconds to load your Web pages

E-commerce sites have two seconds to load a Web page or consumers will click away. And after three seconds nearly all customers will split, according to research by Forrester and Akamai.

Akamai had Forrester conduct a followup to a 2006 survey. The 2006 survey found that 4 seconds was the threshold for Web page loading. Three years later that threshold has been halved.

Quick page loading is a big factor in loyalty for e-commerce sites. No surprise there. It's also no surprise that Akamai---which sells services to speed up Web pages---is doing the survey. Nevertheless, the results are interesting.

Some tidbits from the 1,048 online shoppers surveyed:

• 47 percent of consumers expect a Web page to load in 2 seconds or less and 40 percent won't wait more than 3 seconds.
• 52 percent say quick page loading is important to their loyalty. In 2006, that tally was 12 percent.
• 23 percent will stop shopping with slow page loads.
• 79 percent of shoppers that get slow page loads say they are less likely to buy from that site again. Meanwhile, 64 percent just buy goods from another store.
• 16 percent of consumers have shopped via a mobile phone.

You can find the full survey (with registration) here.