Let’s say you’re in line at the grocery store with only a gallon of milk… and it’s a long line. You take your place in it, and wait… and wait… and wait… finally asking yourself, “is a carton of milk worth this?”

That the same principle applies to your online store. Long lag-time and unreliable access can quickly drive potential customers away from shopping at your site, and the bad experience may keep them from returning. Recently, Motorcycle-Superstore reported that by improving their site’s performance and page reliability, they were able to increase conversions by 12%. Customers would get so frustrated with the lag throughout parts of the site that they’d turn to ordering from the company’s call center, or not at all.

“Since the implementation, the growth in orders has been significantly stronger on the web side than on the call center side. Prior to that, we were seeing neck-and-neck growth—maybe even a little higher for the call center,” he says. Today, call center orders represent only about 15% to 20% of company sales.”

Check your site’s performance levels on a regular basis, and respond swiftly to constant lags. Customers turn to the web for a convenient shopping option… by eliminating the convenience, you might have lost the customer.