Bad UX-UI Design can be very costly to a business! – Google and e-point report
Up to €231 million in lost revenue for online stores due to barriers associated with poor user experience on smartphones. An audit conducted by Google and e-point confirmed that poor website design and slow performance can have a serious impact on financial results.
Polish e-commerce clients are mostly smartphone users. This can also be seen in the number of queries in the Polish Google search engine: in 2021, we asked Google twice as many questions from our mobile phones as from our desktop computers. This trend is continuing, and the number of mobile internet users is growing.
70% of shoppers abandon to complete their purchases on mobile, so removing barriers to mobile use could contribute significantly to revenue.
A Pole is on average involved in more than seven shopping processes at the same time – explains Michał Protasiuk of Google Polska, based on IPSOS research for Google. – We are multi-taskers: we shop online at the bus stop, we add products to our virtual shopping carts while standing in line at the post office, but most often we do not finish our shopping because the bad experience and barriers that come with shopping on the phone scare us away.
Interestingly, retailers themselves admit that the conversion rate on smartphones – i.e., the percentage of customers who start the purchase process and complete it – is about 50% lower than when shopping on a computer. According to estimates by Google, as much as EUR 231 million of revenue is lost due to barriers related to poor user experience while shopping on phones. Additionally, of this, as much as 222 million euros is the amount that consumers would potentially spend on electronics purchases. These barriers result from the inadequate adaptation of e-commerce websites to the mobile channel: problems with proper product presentation and comparing different offers, as well as tiresome scrolling on smartphones.
Speaking of potential losses for the e-commerce sector: this money may go to other sellers or the consumer may abandon the purchase. However, we know that this can be prevented and Polish companies can significantly improve their sales in the mobile channel says Piotr Kowalski, Senior Analytical Consultant at Google. – We conducted an audit of mobile user experience and website speed among 50 Polish e-commerce companies from very different industries: health and beauty, furniture, groceries, electronics, books, and fashion, to help them adapt to customers and eliminate barriers, in fact, increase sales. Today, even a second of downtime can affect cart abandonment – as many as 91% of consumers admit to leaving a site when it’s too slow.
Over 1110 recommendations concerning positive customer experience or improving the speed of a mobile website have resulted from the audits conducted in Poland, 25% of which have already been implemented or are in the process of implementation.
Among the companies that implemented at least one recommendation to improve the customer experience, the increase in conversions (transactions) performed on smartphones was over 3.3%. In contrast, companies that made no change saw an average decrease in conversions of 6.2%.
In the case of recommendations concerning the speed of stores in the mobile channel, the companies that followed the recommendations received an average of 11% increase in speed. However, where no recommendations were implemented, there was a 4% decrease.
The example of Orange Polska, which after changing the front-end of its service to a much faster one, recorded a conversion increase of over 52%, proves how much can be achieved thanks to the changes. An important element of its success was a thorough analysis of the relation between conversion and loading time. It turned out that improving the loading time of the website significantly translates into an increase in sales. In short, a fast mobile service sells better and more.
Today’s smartphone user is busy and distracted, and expects the mobile version of the store to work quickly and efficiently. We took part in this project in order to examine how to effectively help Polish companies operate quickly and efficiently from the technological side. We believe that it is worth spending time and resources on both the service design aspect, as well as choosing the right technologies, in order to achieve measurable business benefits by scaling sales – says Michał Szklarski, Member of the Board of e-point mobile (e-point capital group).
Research methodology and key findings
The analysis of mobile User Experience study included analysis of two typical scenarios of online store usage. The first scenario involved searching for a product on Google, navigating to the product page, adding it to the shopping cart and purchasing it. In the second scenario, the auditor started his visit on the store’s homepage, searched and filtered for products, and then bought them. The evaluation was based on 58 checkpoints – mobile user experience best practices, developed by Google and leading research institutes such as m.in. Adjustment of the size of buttons for finger navigation, appropriate text size, or appropriate presentation of product images on a small screen of the phone.
The study of mobile page speed included an analysis of three Basic Web Performance Indicators (LCP, FID, CLS – they define the speed at which content appears on the screen, the visual stability of the content during loading, as well as the response time to user actions), using anonymous statistical data from hundreds of thousands of Polish users of the Chrome mobile browser and from specially conducted laboratory tests. Based on the results, companies received a report with detailed recommendations to improve user experience and speed of mobile store operations. Clients also participated in status meetings, during which they received consultations on the implementation of recommendations and their impact on business results. After the project, we calculated the average conversion rate for smartphones for the period before the audit presentation and after the last status meeting, ending the project. From a group of 50 stores, we selected companies which implemented at least one UX or speed recommendation and compared it with a cohort of companies which did not implement any recommendation.