A recent study in Cambridge, England, demonstrated high levels of customer frustration, leading to their cutting short visits to popular websites.

Poor website performance can cost companies millions annually in wasted marketing money, according to a study conducted by Red Gate Software, a supplier of testing software for web applications.

Red Gate used its ANTS (Advanced .NET Testing System) software to simulate the experience of 500 visitors to popular corporate, travel, shopping and search engine sites. ANTS Load uses patented “frustration coefficient” and “abandonment prediction” measurements that reflect ongoing research documenting people’s emotional response to website delays.

The frustration coefficient is ranked 0 to 100, with 100 being the highest level of frustration; the abandonment index is a prediction of the percentage of people who will leave the site in frustration.

Turning Away Customers
“The business impact of poor web application performance goes straight to a company’s bottom line,” says Simon Galbraith, Red Gate’s Director of Marketing and Sales. “If your website has an abandonment prediction of 25 percent, it means you are likely to be turning away 25 percent of your potential web customers - it’s that simple.”

Galbraith uses AT&T as an example. AT&T spent an estimated $447 million in the first half of 2001, according to figures in AdAge.com from research firm CMR. These ads generate website traffic. Yet Red Gate’s research predicts that 33 percent of those visiting AT&T’s site will abandon it because of poor performance. The frustration coefficient is 41, as a result of long download times for accessing web pages. Galbraith says that a frustration coefficient under 5 is very good, but anything over 20 can have a negative business impact.

In comparison to AT&T, people are unlikely to abandon Microsoft’s site, even though it has a fairly high frustration coefficient of 28. Two sites can have identical frustration coefficients, but dramatically different abandonment predictions. That’s because sites that occasionally inflict extremely long wait times are abandoned more frequently than those that are fairly slow all the time.

In Microsoft’s case, an abandonment prediction of 0 means more bang for the buck: For advertising that drives potential customers to the website, Red Gate predicts that AT&T achieved about the same impact as Microsoft, while spending an estimated 50 percent more.

Booking Travel
More than 80,000 people in the United States do searches for flight information each day. Companies such as Orbitz, Hotwire, American Airlines and Delta Airlines are spending as much as 60 cents a person on search engine advertising to lure visitors to their flight booking sites. Factoring in other advertising that drives traffic to their sites, these and other travel companies could be spending as much as $1 for each visitor. Yet, these sites have relatively high frustration coefficients, ranging from 25 (Orbitz) to 33 (Expedia). One quarter of visitors to Orbitz and Expedia are predicted to abandon the sites.

Online Shopping
Just about everybody who shops online has a story of frustration and abandonment. But, none are likely to equal those of visitors to ShopperUK.com, a website that sells large appliances such as refrigerators and washing machines. According to Red Gate’s measure, everyone who uses the site is frustrated by the way it operates, and half of all visitors are predicted to abandon it.

Search Engines
Search engines are guides or portals to the Internet, making them among the most frequently visited websites. All the search sites tested by Red Gate had abandonment prediction percentages of 0, but Yahoo had a rather high frustration level of 30. According to Red Gate, Google has earned its reputation for no-fuss searching, with a low frustration coefficient of 11. But, Google is not exclusive in its simplicity and fast response: Altavista, Lycos and LookSmart all have frustration coefficients equal to, or lower than, Google’s.

Full Results and Methodology
For full results of the study and a more complete description of the methodologies, please visit here.

About Red Gate Software
Red Gate Software make simple software that solves complex problems for developers and testers. The company is a Microsoft Gold Visual Studio .NET launch partner and a VSIP partner. In addition to ANTS, other software tools by Red Gate include SQL Compare for comparing and synchronizing SQL databases, and the Aardvark bug tracking system.

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