Who is the real competitor in businesses today

Recent studies show that the greatest competition for most companies today isn't other businesses, but the back button that takes customers away from their Websites to other businesses.
"You're probably losing more sales to customers leaving your Website because it took too long to load than you are to competitors," researchers state.
A recent study by Gomez.com shows that slow loading time is no longer just an inconvenience, it's very bad for business.
From an increasingly negative brand perception to the lost sales, the consequences of a company's slow Website are serious.
For every $1,000 an e-commerce site makes, a one second delay could cost it $25,000 per year.
To put it into perspective, if Amazon slowed down by just three seconds, it would lose $1.6 billion worth of potential sales that year.
In addition, 40 per cent of people will abandon a Website if it takes longer than three seconds to load. And nearly 90 per cent of them are less likely to return to the site after a bad experience while one of them will also tell others about it. Imperva Incapsula's study on adults who self reported their online shopping frequency to be slightly often or more concludes that only a 38 per cent customers are willing to wait for more than five seconds for an e-commerce Website to load.
And it is not just a company's sales team and customers who are impacted by the speed of its Website, search engines expect it to be pretty fast too.
Google, for example, claims to be on a mission to 'make the whole Web faster' and ultimately recognises and promotes the best Websites across all categories with speed being a defining component in its search ranking formula.
Though speed is certainly not the most significant element (unlike, say, crafting relevant content), site speed does play some impact on the search engine's ranking system.
But even if market studies, consumer statistics, and SEO algorithms are kept aside, it all comes down to the basic and unavoidable knowledge that this is a time where the world wide Web is a very intricate part of every business to business and business to consumer interaction.
A Website that is functional, effective, and convenient is no longer just a competitive advantage but an absolute requirement to every type of business, be it small, big, new, old, or blue chip.
"It is important for businesses to realise that they need to implement tools and functionality within their Websites that make it easy for customers to do the things they want or to do. Speed is important because it is yet another incentive to make the Website appealing," says Hamza Rahimi, a Web and game designer.
Your Website is your face value. Successful businesses invest well in Website speed along with every other functionalities because they understand the benefits it reaps nearly right away.
 
Rabiya Shabeeh is a freelance writer based in Dubai. Views expressed are her own and do not reflect the newspaper's policy.