Imagine visiting a shop and finding something you really wanted to buy, then you look up and you can’t find the till. When you do find the till, the assistant is moving so slowly that the mile long queue is going nowhere except back out the door. Chances are you’re not going to wait and you decide you’ll be able to find a similar top in the shop next door, so you abandon the product and leave.

Now if this was a customer visiting your website, you would have just lost a £30 sale, more if they had decided to buy the shoes that co-ordinate with the top. In fact, the average online shopper spends £600 a year online. Wow, we bet you’re feeling the sting now.

In fact, a new survey has just revealed that online shoppers are experiencing more website slow downs and problems completing their transactions, especially during popular shopping periods.

With £620 at stake for your business, we suggest you do all you can to make your payment process as smooth as possible. How can you ever expect a high conversion rate if you don’t?

Don’t make excuses during busy shopping periods either - consumers expect your website to perform well for them regardless of how many other shoppers are also visiting the site.

It's also clear that when shoppers encounter performance problems, their patience and loyalty runs out. When a customer leaves your site, chances are they’re not coming back. Can you afford to lose business this way?

Other highlights of the survey include:

•    A third of online shoppers had a bad experience on a retail website during the 2009 Christmas shopping season and 15% found the problem to be "unacceptable."
•    These bad online experiences caused nearly one in five online shoppers to shop at another site.
•    In general, 41% of online shoppers will only tolerate one or two bad online experiences before abandoning your website.