The research, commissioned by Compuware, a software and services company, revealed that almost one quarter of respondents 23% estimate their annual losses resulting from their poorly performing transactional Web site at around ¬2,7m (R21m). Another third put their losses at around ¬542 355 (R5,25m) per year, while 21% said they were losing around ¬1,627m (R15,75m).

While there are no figures for SA companies which conduct business over the Internet, there is no reason to believe that the situation here is any better or different. Indeed, it is probably worse given the generally poorer performance of local sites as a result of bandwidth constraints and the cost associated with it, says Filipe Serralheiro, application performance management consultant at Compuware SA.

Transactional sites should be an essential element of any retail business, much like shop fronts, and it is therefore important that this position of any retail business be managed and results indicate the experience that each user has on these sites.

How often are IT managers asked to justify additional bandwidth or even marketing managers asked if the Online site are feasible to be functional or even adding value to the business. What tools are used to measure performance and accessibility not to mention the most important of them all user experience, these results are important to any business decision-maker, as this can affect business results.

However, consumers have confirmed that they find the mismanagement of Web sites highly frustrating, with 72% stating that, if a Web site performs badly, they are unlikely to make a transaction. In addition 68% said that if Web site performance does not match their expectations, they will use an alternative site to make the purchase. Only 43% of customers questioned said that if they logged onto a site and it performed poorly, they would re-visit it.

It is like having your customer walk out of your store and head for a competitor because of poor service. Only, 'walking out of a Web site is a lot easier and more convenient. So while delivering a good customer experience is essential in bricks and mortar establishments, it is considerably more important with transactional Web sites, Serralheiro says.

Yet the research revealed that while the 200 organisations surveyed believe that they have the necessary procedures in place to safeguard user experience, the reality is that they do not.

Half the respondents claimed to monitor and manage the performance of their transactional Web site yet just six percent have specific information about the actual end user experience for each individual logging on. In fact, 61% of companies have no idea if, and when, a client drops off a page or how many times they might click the refresh button in a particular section.

Of the 200 IT directors surveyed, 51% only monitor the load on the Web server to ensure that peaks in demand do not bring the site down. This approach does not enable organisations to measure and evaluate real end-user experience, Serralheiro explains. Companies may consider themselves to be on top of managing the end-user experience of their transactional Web sites, but, as the research highlights, this belief is misplaced. The measurements that they are currently using may be ineffective and unrepresentative.

Retailers are investing huge sums in e-commerce because it can and should further their competitive advantage, yet some are struggling. The reason for this is that there is a big knowledge gap between what retailers think they know and what they actually know. The Internet is a free market and the bottom line is that if your site is performing badly there will be a company with a similar product which has a site meeting users performance expectations. The consumer response is just to move to another site.

And if a customer complained, presently just six percent of European retailers would be able to take proactive steps to resolve individual user performance issues. Organisations need to become more customer-centric in their approach to service delivery management. If retailers want to start making money from their transactional Web sites, instead of losing it, they need to be able to pinpoint problems, be in a position to solve them quickly, and proactively manage their online service, Serralheiro concludes.