If customers are offered anything less than an engaging experience online, the reputation of the brand suffers.
But a poor experience isn’t always about the quality of the video or even high impact rich media. Marketing teams usually do a great job of this. It is much more likely to be about poor responsiveness or buffering video. After all, video that won’t play is often worse than no video at all.
Human beings are easily distracted and in particular when it comes to online engagement, to the extent that viewers consider abandoning pages that are taking too long to load or videos that don’t start playing within a couple of seconds. Whilst brands want to impress with the quality of the content, it shouldn’t be at the expense of simple, responsive delivery.
So much about a brand is invested in the consumer’s online experience. It can be as crucial as a memorable slogan or an ad campaign in forming impressions of a brand, and the one value you don’t want associated is slow sluggish performance.
The Internet empowers and connects today’s consumer and it will continue to influence behaviour into the future. Consumers are increasingly using their mobiles or tablets from wherever they are, to compare products and prices before making a purchase decision, they are knowledgeable about their options, and this has led to a greater demand for a responsive and flawless service. Research has shown that poor website performance for those using mobiles and tablets can have a dramatic impact on a business, with 49% saying they are unlikely to visit the site again if they are dissatisfied with its performance, and a third reporting that they would be less likely to purchase from that company[1].
If there are loading delays or interruptions to webpages or videos, they will seek a better service elsewhere, which puts more pressure on brands to maintain consistency between the brand promise, product delivery and the quality and performance of their online content.
It’s not easy to deliver fast high quality online experiences. Consumers use such a wide variety of devices and expect the same satisfying experience from each one. There are more browsers now than there have ever been and fixed and mobile network infrastructures are overloaded. Today, brands have to decide whether they want to manage their own content delivery, or work with a third party to help them overcome these challenges.
The importance of optimising your website and planning its capabilities as part of your business growth strategy is clear. While two years ago that probably meant the ability to offer a multichannel service, now it means dealing with the challenges of multi-device consumption, and ensuring that your video content is instantly delivered, often in HD, whether the whole world is watching, or just one customer at a time.
[1] Compuware APM Study
