New Relic Study Reveals Delivery Speed a Primary Concern in India, as 60% of Consumers Abandon Apps Over Buffering

Independent survey of 2,000+ Indian online shoppers uncovers consumer sentiment on secure payments, peak sale periods, the digital customer experience, delivery speeds, and super apps

New Relic, the all-in-one observability platform for every engineer, announced findings from its State of Ecommerce in India report. The independent survey of more than 2,000 Indian online shoppers reveals that 60% of respondents said they would leave an app mid-engagement if they experienced buffering for longer than 10 seconds, and 20% said that they wouldn’t tolerate more than five seconds of buffering before they abandoned or switched apps. Apps freezing or crashing, as well as misleading app descriptions, were also primary concerns.

“As attention spans continue to drop and app marketplaces become more crowded, buffering is a key consumer concern that must be addressed by ecommerce providers seeking to gain market share,” said New Relic Vice President Sales for India Prasad Rai. “Observability solves these challenges by providing insights into why particular systems are experiencing lag and pinpoints issues before they impact the digital customer experience. Observability is a game changer for engineering teams because it allows them to proactively analyse and optimise their systems based on logs, metrics, and traces to provide a real-time view of collated data.”

Key findings from the State of Ecommerce in India report include:

Multiple notifications lead to churn:

• Consumers faced various challenges with mobile apps, such as multiple notifications (41%), slow buffering/loading times (38%), and draining batteries (34%). Multiple notifications were particularly bothersome for Android users (41%) compared to iOS users (34%).

• Although 72% of survey respondents said they most often use mobile apps for online purchases, 59% used less than three mobile apps for their daily online shopping. This finding indicates that while consumers download and actively use shopping apps, they are selective about which apps they use.

Speedy apps and delivery times lead to greater customer satisfaction:

• A slow loading time was one of the biggest reasons for consumers to stop using an app mid-engagement (34%), or even delete it (25%), indicating that addressing delays and buffering is critical for technology teams. It becomes even more problematic during online sales such as Black Friday, with outages having the potential to impact reputation and revenue.

• Survey respondents expressed the importance of a speedy user experience, both in terms of app responsiveness and product delivery time. Nearly half (46%) of respondents noted that a key reason to download a shopping app was its ability to offer a better or faster user experience compared to the website equivalent.

• Consumers also expected product delivery times to be swift, which was reflected in their uptake of 15-minute delivery services. More than half (55%) said they use instant online grocery delivery apps that deliver in 15 minutes or less at least once per week.

Consumers seek a personalised experience and regular promotions:

• More than half (59%) of the survey respondents said they use less than three mobile apps for their daily online shopping, indicating that online retailers need to develop brand loyalty by finding new and innovative ways to capture consumer attention.

Consumers have a strong desire for secure online payments:

• Nearly half noted that instant updates and notifications (42%) and seamless payment functionality (41%) are desirable features of a mobile shopping app.

• When asked about their top three concerns regarding digital payment methods, survey respondents most frequently cited security and privacy (54%), followed by payment failure (50%) and problems processing refunds (45%).

Methodology

All report data is derived from a survey, which was conducted by YouGov India on behalf of New Relic in June 2023. The goal was to understand the online behaviours of customers shopping on ecommerce websites. The survey was self-administered via an 8 to 10-minute online interview in English. YouGov interviews were conducted with the YouGov panel of 2,008 respondents aged 18–45+, with 55% identifying as male and 45% identifying as female. The report defines online shopping as the purchase of clothing, groceries, and household items.

For more information, view the State of Ecommerce in India report and create your New Relic account today.

About New Relic

As a leader in observability, New Relic empowers engineers with a data-driven approach to planning, building, deploying, and running great software. New Relic delivers the only unified data platform that empowers engineers to get all telemetry—metrics, events, logs, and traces—paired with powerful full stack analysis tools to help engineers do their best work with data, not opinions. Delivered through the industry’s first usage-based consumption pricing that’s intuitive and predictable, New Relic gives engineers more value for the money by helping improve planning cycle times, change failure rates, release frequency, and mean time to resolution. This helps the world’s leading brands including adidas Runtastic, American Red Cross, Australia Post, Banco Inter, Chegg, GoTo Group, Ryanair, Sainsbury’s, Signify Health, Topgolf, and World Fuel Services (WFS) improve uptime, reliability, and operational efficiency to deliver exceptional customer experiences that fuel innovation and growth. www.newrelic.com.