Consumers less tolerant of poor mobile web experiences than ever

According to a new report by EPiServer, the content management and portal solutions organisation, consumers are becoming less and less tolerant of mobile websites that are under par.

Nearly 65% of respondents to the survey, entitled Developing a mobile strategy: how to deliver mobile sites that truly engage, say that they would only give a mobile website up to three chances before moving on to another site.
The report states that the majority of UK consumers (59%) now own a smart phone, while 18% own a tablet device.
Almost 75% of consumers who have a mobile device (73%) said they have accessed a website on it in the last 12 months and 67% have used an app. In addition, when asked about what they are doing on these sites, 33% said they had made a purchase using a website on a mobile device in the last year, while 26% had done so through a mobile app.

More than a quarter (32%) said they find mobile websites hard to navigate, while 35% said that if a mobile website is hard to use they’ll drop off. Further to that, 15% said they had stopped using a mobile website because it was hard to navigate and 14% indicated that they rarely felt like the mobile version of a website met their expectations.

Almost half (49%) said they find mobile sites slow, 35% found logins difficult and a further 35% said that mobile sites are often missing important functionality. Nearly a fifth (19%) of consumers found it hard to access the content they were looking for.

All of which shows the crucial importance of good mobile web design.