The majority of the websites that modern mothers prefer to use for safe shopping online are not able to meet expectations in terms of the use experience they offer for visitors using smartphones.

This is according to the latest study from Equimedia, which found that 90 per cent of the sites which were singled out by parents as being their go-to portal for making e-commerce purchases do not load quickly enough on portable devices.

Most of the sites assessed were also criticised for having a sub-par interface when accessed by mums who tend to browse while on the move, rather than having the time to sit down in front of a desktop PC or laptop to carry out safe shopping online.

Two fifths of the people questioned in the study said that when a web page does not load in less than three seconds they tend to give up and head elsewhere, so there is a real disconnect between customer expectations and the actual performance levels that retailers can offer mobile-using mothers today.

94 per cent of respondents said that their smartphone was their first port of call for web access. This is by no means a trend that is exclusive to parents in 2017, but is indicative of wider usage trends amongst the under-35s in general. Yet reports like this regularly suggest that retailers are still falling short when it comes to catering to mobile users.

Page load speeds remain a big hurdle that sites need to overcome, although it is also important to balance this against the fact that modern users also expect bespoke experiences and a wealth of multimedia to go along with their online shopping. The fact that so many retailers are not getting this right is indicative of the challenges they face.