As retailers reinvent their in-store shopping experience in the face of the continued rise of e-commerce, research released by Cisco found that 78 percent of all US shoppers use the Internet to research and purchase products and services. The study also found that 71 percent of shoppers want access to digital content in the store for price comparisons, check availability, ratings/reviews and receive expert advice in which 1 in 3 shoppers uses a mobile phone to research in store.

Under the influence of the Internet and new communications technologies is the buying behavior of consumers in recent years intervene and quickly changed. The consumer determines his own profile, looking for a sales channel and buy when it comes out at one time and is much more critical and informed. It requires higher demands and availability of the Internet environment of the retailer to facilitate and encourage the use of Internet in the shop.

Key Highlights

The Cisco study surveyed 5,000 shoppers across five countries: the United States, United Kingdom, Brazil, Mexico and China. Key results of the U.S. portion of the survey include:

Shoppers demand more access to digital content in stores

• 78 percent of all shoppers use the Internet to research and purchase products and services.
• 71 percent of shoppers want to access digital content in the store.
• Shoppers have equal preference to obtaining such content through retailer touchscreens or via personal devices.
• Digital shoppers are more demanding than ever, with 60 percent now expecting more value in their shopping experience.  Of these shoppers, 53 percent expect greater price visibility, 37 percent want easier ways to find products, and 39 percent desire faster/easier way to purchase products.

Online resources have strong influence in shoppers' buying decisions

• Of all the information sources that influence today's buying decisions, online ratings and reviews on retailer websites are cited as most influential in purchase decisions by 52 percent of respondents, followed by advice from friends and family (49 percent).
•  In the last two years, expert online reviews by consumer groups, expert buyers, and bloggers, increased 13 percent in purchase influence to 42 percent.
• Shoppers prefer online ratings and reviews by a 4:1 margin over advice from store employees.

Changing how consumers shop: more desire for mobile, self-service access to information and personalized services

• 65 percent of shoppers research online and purchase in store – up from 57 percent last year.
• The "show-rooming" shopping journey that begins with in-store research and ends with online purchasing was pursued by 40 percent of respondents – roughly the same as last year.   
• Cross-channel shopping journeys involving mobile devices rose on average by 20 percent from last year; mobile search to in-store or online purchase is now actively used by 29 percent and 33 percent of shoppers, respectively.
• 85 percent of shoppers want self-service access to digital content.  Only 4 percent of shoppers want to rely on help from store employees all the time.

Infographic courtesy Cisco

According to Wikipidia.org "Conversion Rate Optimization is the process of increasing website leads and sales without spending money and attracting more visitors by reducing your visitors bounce rate".
In case your are wondering what that has too do with Website Performance Monitoring I will share a infographic with you which I got from Shopatron.

There are a lot ways to increase the conversion rate on your website or Internet store but one of the key elements is to take a look to the website - and webpage individualy - speed. Keep in mind that 47% of consumers expect a maximum page load time of 2 seconds. After 2 seconds the abandonment rate increases 6.7% per second.

Are you, on this moment that you're reading this, aware of your webpage loading time? And when your vistors or customers are located in an another city, country or even continent? Do you know which elements of your HTML page are slowing down your website and thus ready for optimization?

You can find the answers to this questions on the Uptrends Free Website tools department. We are here for you to minimise downtime and optimise website speed!

Check out the infographic:

Infographic courtesy Shopatron

The 2012 Holiday Season kicked off with record breaking stats. According to comScore the online spending reached $1.465 billion on Cyber Monday, representing the heaviest online spending day in history and the second day this season (in addition to Black Friday) to surpass $1 billion in sales.

At Uptrends, we have been monitoring the website performance of the most popular e-commerce sites which belongs to the Internet Retailer Top 100. We did this in anticipation to the Holiday Season, on Black Friday and in this blogpost we will share the key findings regarding the website availability over last weekend.

From Black Friday (November, 23th) till Cyber Monday (November 26th), Uptrends monitored the home pages of 980 Online Retailers. Testing was conducted using the Uptrends Website Monitoring tool and our global monitoring network, which consists of more than 100 checkpoints, with a monitoring interval period of 5 minutes.

• The average uptime of the entire group of 980 Online Shops was 99.86%, which indicates an average downtime of 8 minutes per website.
• The average uptime of the 15 least available Online Stores was 96,26% with an average downtime of 216 minutes (3 hours and 36 minutes)
• 818 Online Stores had a 99.90% uptime or better, including 749 Online Stores (76.4%) with a performance rating of 100% uptime
• 162 internet stores (16.5%) did not perform well with average uptimes between 91.30% and 99.89%.

And we are underway! The Holiday Season was officially openened on Thanksgiving Day with, according to Experian, an increased online traffic by 71% as compared to 2011. The top 500 retail sites recieved more than 181 million total US visits. E-tailers enjoyed a robust Black Friday which brought them a sales bump of 23%.

But how robust was Black Friday for the most e-tailers in reality? How good were their websites resist to the heavy traffic surges, stay up and running an delivering great performance during these days? This is the weekend that will test the limits of retail websites and reveal which brands has been successfull in their preparations.

At Uptrends we have been monitoring the website performance of the Top 1000 retailers according to Internet Retailer. We conducted the test from over 100 checkpoints worldwide with a monitoring interval period of 5 minutes and checked their availability for (potential) customers. 

We share with you the online stores which showed the lowest availability during Black Friday

Did you experience downtime yourself? Be sure that you are ready for the busiest monday of the year. This Cyber Monday will, again, break records in revenue and website traffic.
Do not risk losing customers with a loss of revenue as result. Start website monitoring with Uptrends by simple register for a 4 week FREE trial. There is no need to implement software as it is an hosted service and you will be up-and-running within 5 minutes.

Black Friday, the traditional start of the holiday shopping season, has just begun. It has been the biggest shopping day of the year for the past 7 year. With all the preparations despite how ready are the Online Retailers for this shopping season?

Following on our annual survey to the availability of the Top Online Retailers in the United States, we keep on monitoring them during these days.

As of right now a couple online retailers had serious outages. We name the 3 Online Retailers who were the least available last night:

1. www.billiondollarbabes.com (ranked 606 Internet Retailer Top 1000 2012) - Uptime 48.21% representing a downtime of 479.9 minutes

2. www.aquinasandmore.com (ranked 959) - Uptime 52.38% - Downtime in minutes: 467.4

3. www.thenaturalsapphirecompany.com (ranked 844) -  Uptime 73.83% - Downtime in minutes: 257

Methodology
Uptrends monitored the front page of the websites every 5 minutes utilizing 100+ worldwide monitoring stations. When a website was not accessaible, a different checkpoint attampted to confirm the issue. The periods in which a site was accessible were alsoe registered by Uptrends as uptime. The periods when the errors were confirmed, were recorded as downtime. The research only indicated the accessibility of the front page and did not account for website maintenance.

With the start of the Holiday Season just around the corner, it represents the biggest opportunity of the year for retail sales. During this period, it is imperative that your online store has maximum availability.

At Uptrends we understand this and are committed to helping in optimizing the performance and availability of online stores during the peak holiday season. Here below, are some key data points that illustrate how website performance directly impacts your current and future revenue:

1. Although your website traffic increases, your visitors expect the same level of performance
According to a study of Equation Research (2010), 78% of consumers surveyed went to a competitor’s site due to poor performance at peak Web traffic times.

2. Quick page loading is a key factor in site loyalty
Online shopper loyalty is dependent on quick page loading. About 42% of online shoppers stated that quick page loading is important to their site loyalty

3. Consumers become impatient when pages take longer than 2 seconds to load
The average online shopper expects your web pages to load in 2 seconds or less. After 3 seconds, up to 40% of the shoppers will abandon your site.

4. A slow website affects future revenue
Consider the fact that repeat customers spend 67% more and are more profitable than first-time buyers

5. When page load time decreases, conversion rate will increase
Conversion rates increase to 74% when a page load time decreases from 8 to 2 seconds.

6. Once a customer can’t continue the order process, (s)he’s gone… permanently
75% of online shoppers who experience a site that freezes, crashes, is slow to render or involves a complicated checkout process, will leave the store and will no longer buy from that site

Make sure that your most important pages are working for the Holiday Season
Uptrends is a leading provider of website performance and transaction monitoring services for online stores. Uptrends allows you to monitor multiple steps from the end user’s perspective, such as customer login, product pages, shopping basket and forms. When a transaction step fails, Uptrends will send you notifications in real time via SMS and e-mail. With Uptrends, you will always be the first to know whether the performance of your website is not functioning properly or business transactions are working or not.

Why Uptrends is the right choice for your online business:

• Monitor just a single URL or add unlimited multiple steps from end users perspective
• Largest global monitoring network available. 100+ checkpoints worldwide
• Instant notifications by email, SMS, RSS
• Detailed online and email performance reports
• Free access to screenshots of every error recorded to allow for easy diagnosis of issues
• Powerful control panel with user-defined alert-, escalation-, SLA and maintenance settings
• Infinite array of configurable reports which are easily exported by email, PDF or Excel
• Offices in both the US and Europe, offering you free customer support.

Holiday Season Special

Don’t risk losing customers and the opportunity to increase sales during the most important time of the year! We invite you to see yourself why thousands of companies in 45 countries rely on Uptrends as their website and transaction monitoring solution. Simply register for a free trial account and you’ll have full access to all our features for 4 weeks. During the trial period we offer free customer support.

Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday are just around the corner and the holiday season represents the biggest opportunity of the year for online retail sales. According to Internet Retailer, retail web sales will increase 12% over last year’s holiday shopping season and is forecasted to provide between $92 and $96 billion in revenue. During the holiday season, it is imperative that your online store has maximum availability.

Lab42 conducted a market research with a survey of 500 shoppers and found that nearly a quarter of America shoppers are planning to start shopping before 3 a.m. on Black Friday.

Additional findings are displayed in the infographic below.

Infographic courtesy Lab42

Just a quick trivia question: Which country hosts the most of the world's visited websites?

It would not probably surprise you that the answer to that question is the U.S. hosting over 450.000 of the world's most visited websites. 

Hostcabi is a company that focuses on all the information about the global hosting websites. They created an infographic to show where the top million sites in the world are hosted and also who hosted them.

The far most website are hosted in the U.S., with Houston hosting over 50.000 of the most trafficked sites in the world followed by Mountain View, Dallas and Scotsdale. But also Europe is doing very well with Germany as second best country and Amsterdam as best 'hostingcity' of Europe. 

A day after Hurricane Sandy descended down on the east coast of the U.S. we can look back on what devastation Sandy has caused through a plethora of news updates streaming from the web. TechCrunch reported earlier that data centers stationed in the New Jersey and New York area have been affected because of power outages. This took several sites in the blogosphere down like BuzzFeed, Huffington Post, Gawker and Gizmodo. Nearly 1 million homes and businesses in New York State are without electricity, according to an Associated Press report. You can follow important information postings and updates about Hurricane Sandy on Twitter.

On the other hand, the big storm did create a big wave of orders for U.S. based e-retailers according to the Internet Retailer. Online retailer Power Equipment Direct reported a record sales day Friday for such items as generators, chain saws and sump pumps. Retailers such as Lowe’s and Power Equipment also are using their e-commerce sites to offer advice and tips on hurricane safety, operating a generator, boarding windows, covering a roof with a tarp and chainsaw safety. These retailers also said that they have back-up web disaster plans in place if it was needed. Perhaps the most important lesson Sandy taught us, is that it’s good to rely on a redundant (web)server network so that business, email and information provision can continue during any disaster.