Jul 02 1999: Ecommerce merchants may lose up to USD4.35 billion in sales each year, if Web sites do not maintain an average download time of eight seconds, according to Zona Research. This is effectively a potential monthly loss in excess of USD362 million.

The study found that the amount of time it takes for a site to download directly effects the electronic trade on the site, with more than a third of users abandoning an attempt to make an online purchase due to the time involved.

Online consumers with 14.4kb modems, who cannot load pages within the recommended eight seconds are expected to cost the ecommerce industry over USD73 million per month in lost sales. An additional USD58 million will be lost in pages that fail to load. Within individual industries, the travel and tourism is likely to lose USD2.8 million because of slow downloading, while the online securities trading industry may lose USD3 million.