UK far from OK in global e-commerce race, Applause

UK e-commerce retailers massively lag behind their US and German counterparts, dogged, as they are, by slow website speeds, frustrating checkout processes and poor search relevancies.

That’s according to research from Applause carried out during the period from Black Friday through to 31st December 2018 and involving over 50 retail e-commerce sites. The UK generated the highest total software bug count, accounting for 45% of all bugs found, followed by the US at 32%, and Germany at 23%.

Each country was given a score based on the user experience provided and overall functional maturity of the websites analysed. The US led the way scoring 7.8, Germany followed with 7.4, while the UK came in with just 6.6.

On a global scale, speed and performance of all the major websites analysed fell short of the expectations of users polled: 16% felt the system didn’t respond quickly enough and 14% felt online purchasing didn’t meet expectations. Search results and product pages failed to meet customer expectations, while the shopping cart and checkout process also left customers confused.

Richard Downs, UK Director at Applause, says: “It’s been disappointing to see the UK market perform so badly. Issues identified by our testers ranged from functional errors to poor search relevancy and slow website speeds. It’s clear that UK retailers need to rapidly stabilise their digital properties in order to meet the high bar set by leaders like Amazon.”