Web gridlock stalling UK e-commerce

Nine out of 10 online consumers have been forced to abandon shopping online because the e-commerce web application failed, according to research.

The study, by web performance firm CatchFire Systems, claims that 90 per cent of UK online consumers have experienced application degradation bad enough to force them to abandon web transactions.

Some 70 per cent of these lost transactions were worth £200 or more, involving financial services, gambling, purchasing consumer goods or booking flights.

More than half of the consumers interviewed said they had been forced to move to alternative channels, such as call centres and retail outlets, which substantially increased the cost per transaction.

Others either gave up completely or switched to competitors.

The most serious complaint uncovered was of websites that crashed at the end of the transaction or while the payment was processing. This forces consumers into repeating the operation or making time-consuming calls to check if the purchase has been successfully completed.

"Poor website performance is still plaguing the online industry," said Nigel Thomas, European marketing director at CatchFire Systems.

"Consumers being kicked off websites during purchases is like someone being thrown out of a restaurant in the middle of a meal - it is inexcusable. Our research shows that online consumers have zero tolerance for delays."

But CatchFire warned that customers abandoning online transactions could make the problem worse.

As customers abandon their transactions, web applications have to work hard to roll back or undo them. This taxes the underlying databases as much as, or more than, a normally completed operation, further adding to the load on applications.

"Web gridlock is a product of traditional web infrastructure, which treats all requests equally; so during a traffic surge, application response degrades for all visitors, however important their transactions", said Thomas.