Online retailers are increasingly utilizing third-party applications to enhance functionality and user experiences. Is it working? What are the effects of 3rd party apps on eComm? You’ll be surprized what a recent survey uncovered about 600+ eComm sites.

Yottaa Inc. evaluated more than six hundred (600) eComm sites do discover what retailers were deploying, and to what, if any, effect utilizing these third aprty tools were having.

What are the more popular third-party applications used on eComm sites? According to Yottaa they include advertising, technology, live chat,  personalization, recommendation engines, social media and, shopper ratings and reviews.

They documented the number of third-party applications there were per site, on average, the number of violations that occurred (meaning the times that an application failed to load, or loaded very slowly, and/or was simply a very large and heavy application), and the net effect that any violations had on the performance o the sites and/or online conversations.

The violations were extensive: there were 1,200 third-party violations per hour on eighty (80%) percent of retail websites. This is s shocking number.

The Yottaa study demonstrates below, in part, the impact third-party applications have on site performance.
Average violations: 1,543,137 (per brand site per day)
Average time lost: 1,900 minutes (per brand site per day)
Shopper time lost per page: 3.27 seconds
Shopper time lost per session: 99.4 seconds

Effects of 3rd Party Apps on eComm

“Shoppers today expect the same rich experience online that they experience in-store. Third party applications and content such as personalization, recommendations, and live chat are critical to achieving this,” said Rich Stendardo, CEO of Yottaa. “Unfortunately, these applications can also result in poor performance which has been proven to drive shoppers away to competing sites, resulting in lost revenue.”

Yottaa enables retailers to provide its shoppers with the best of both worlds – lightning fast performance and an engaging experience through third party applications. The impact is that customers have been able to increase online conversions 10-20 percent by using Yottaa to get control of these applications and improve site speed.

Retail e-commerce sites are heavy, that is no secret. Though the trend is improving, with 2016 speed at 4.78 seconds load time verses a 2015 speed time of 5.07.

So retailers find themselves in a quantery: what do they do when the third-party applications that slow down their sites are also the same ones that are driving engagement?

Yottaa says that their platform sequences third party apps in such a way to reduce the aforementioned violations. For more information about Yotaa click here.