There was a time when people were willing to wait. Not any more. The fact is, on demand, up-to-date, and interactive is no longer a nice-to-have. It's essential.

When we want or need something, we tune in via convenient, self-initiated bursts of digital activity. Here's a little eye-opening math: on average, we check our phones 150 times a day. Daily time spent on our phones? 177 minutes. That makes for mobile sessions that average 1 minute and 10 seconds long. Over and over again. As one Google researcher put it, "it's like we're speed dating with our phones".

This impatience plays out in the stats:

40% of shoppers will wait no more than three seconds before abandoning a retail or travel site.

Walmart recently discovered that, for every second it shaved off of load time, conversions increased by 2.4%

'Near me' searches have doubled in the past year.