Apparently it is not just Vodafone customers who are complaining about the time it takes for websites on their mobile phones to load. A study found that majority of Australians felt that mobile sites take too long to load, and were dissatisfied.

The ‘What users want from mobile’ survey commissioned by international digital consultancy Compuware found that globally, with a proportion of the 4000 mobile web users coming from Australia, 71% thought that websites accessed through their mobile phones should load as fast as those on desktop or laptop computers, and are becoming less tolerant of slower loading speeds on their phones. 22% said that phones should in fact offer faster web access than their computers. Respondents agreeing that loading time on a mobile would likely be slower than on a computer fell from 31% in 2009 to 22% this year.

Unfortunately, mobile phones are not meeting up to users’ expectations and 46% felt that their phones were performing less effectively than their PCs. Three seconds appears to be the average time mobile web users expect a website to complete downloading, with 50% of Australians having this expectation. 79% would leave a page if loading was not completed after 5 seconds, and only 43% would attempt to access it on another two occasions. 13% would give up after the first unsuccessful attempt.

46% would never visit a slow-loading website again, and 57% would not recommend it. A third of the surveyed would even opt to use a competitor’s site if loading time exceeded five seconds.

Other problems that mobile web users face include slow-loading apps, frozen websites, formatting errors, sub-standard functionality and a lack of availability.

According to the study, nearly 77% of global corporate mobile platforms fall short of meeting users’ demands. Steve Tack, chief technical officer of Compuware APM says: “User expectations for mobile continue to increase, but companies are still not meeting mobile users’ needs for fast and reliable experiences”.
“Poor performance is preventing many companies from taking advantage of the opportunities being provided by increased mobile access.”