A new regional survey by a US tech firm has revealed that Filipinos spend the longest time online and at the same time the most tolerant when visiting a slow-loading website.
The research report, released by content delivery firm Limelight Networks, also showed that smartphones are the go-to device for accessing the Internet throughout Southeast Asia, and consumers expect fast performance of websites across all devices,
?Our new research shows that nearly half of adult consumers in Southeast Asia are online 16 hours or more each week, outside of work, and they have high expectations for website performance, especially when it comes to e-commerce,? said Jaheer Abbas, regional sales director at Limelight.
?Nearly everyone surveyed said that they?re likely to recommend a brand to a friend if they have a positive Web experience, and on the flip side, that they?ll leave and go to a competitor if it isn?t a good experience.?
The ?State of the User Experience – South East Asia? report was based on a survey of 1,600 consumers, aged 18 and over, chosen at random in Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, and the Philippines.
While there is a great deal of behavioral consistency throughout the region, some interesting regional differences were identified by the survey.
Personalized Web experiences were ranked as very important in all countries, but were slightly less so in Singapore.
Also, while the majority of respondents regionally will abandon a website if the experience is slow, there is slightly more patience in the Philippines.
Despite the differences, the report clearly illustrated the need for organizations to prioritize the optimization of mobile experiences, understand the expectations of consumers within each country rather than implementing a ?one-size-fits-all? approach, and accelerate website performance to keep visitors engaged.
Time spent online varies by country and generation, but people in the Philippines spend the most time online closely followed by those in Malaysia. People in Singapore are online the least.
In Thailand, millennials are online the least, with 34 percent online 16 hours or more per week compared to 42 percent for all other age groups.
The gap is even greater in the Philippines, where 39 percent of millennials versus 56 percent of all other age groups are online this amount of time.
Additional insights from the report include:
? Performance impacts e-commerce sales. Nearly half (43 percent) of consumers surveyed will leave a website and go to a competitor if a webpage takes too long to load.
? Websites should load quickly on all connected devices. 84 percent of respondents report they expect equally fast load times on any device.
? People come for the content. Social media is the top online activity closely followed by online video, and fresh and updated content ranks as the top expectation for Web experiences.
? Consumers want personalized website experiences. Most consumers (67 percent) surveyed want a website to remember them and make recommendations based on previous visits.