Nearly all online consumers would rather take their business elsewhere than contact the web company involved to report a fault, a new survey suggests.
According to research, conducted by Empirix, 91% of web-users would give up on a site after three failed attempts to conduct a transaction, and 99% would not bother to phoning the company to try to complete their transaction.
One-third of consumers say they that would no longer do business online with a particular company if they had a negative experience with them.
Also, one in five respondents said that they stopped doing business with a particular company entirely, both online and offline, as a result of a bad web-based transaction, the survey says.
Web problems now appear to be a part of everyday life in the UK, as nearly half of consumers say that they experience internet problems every week.
Nevertheless, this doesn’t appear to be slowing the growth of online spending as 92% of respondents said that they had shopped online, and 30% said they spend over £50 every month on the web.
Mark Aldridge, sales director from Empirix, said: “These findings show how Web application failures really do undermine consumers’ confidence in a company’s brand, and can wreak havoc on a company’s bottom line.”
© Crimson Business Ltd 2006
