If responses times are as low as 50 ms, it usually isn't a problem when it become 150 ms: people don't notice Similarly, if response times are 2 seconds, it doesn't matter that it becomes 2.1 seconds. However, when the response time is 400 ms, then it is a noticable difference when it becomes 500 ms. People notice that: the site feels more sluggish.
Now whenever I shop at Amazon, I browse around for a bit. It's not that a more sluggish site would cause me to abandon a purchase midway in the purchasing process, but it's rather that I might get annoyed at the sluggishness while browsing and postpone my purchase or take it elsewhere, where I can browse the available products at my leisure.
I think that is what they mean, but if the number is just based on assumptions about who intends to make a purchase, that also means the number is highly disputable. However, I think Amazon has enough data available to simply correlate response times with sales rates over a statistically signifcant period and statistically signifcant amount of sales. In that case, the number is pretty undisputable: if anyone has this kind of data, it's Amazon.
Now whenever I shop at Amazon, I browse around for a bit. It's not that a more sluggish site would cause me to abandon a purchase midway in the purchasing process, but it's rather that I might get annoyed at the sluggishness while browsing and postpone my purchase or take it elsewhere, where I can browse the available products at my leisure.
I think that is what they mean, but if the number is just based on assumptions about who intends to make a purchase, that also means the number is highly disputable. However, I think Amazon has enough data available to simply correlate response times with sales rates over a statistically signifcant period and statistically signifcant amount of sales. In that case, the number is pretty undisputable: if anyone has this kind of data, it's Amazon.