Despite the fact that more Kiwis are buying online—and buying with their mobile devices—many Kiwi businesses aren’t taking that into account when it comes to their websites. And that’s costing them dearly, says a report from direct marketing and digital agency Twenty.

It says bad user experience cost Kiwi businesses over $1 billion in sales to overseas websites last year, a big chunk of the total $2.3 billion spent online by Kiwis for the year in total. And the damage might be worse this year, with the increase in online spending since this time last year twice as high for offshore than for local (17 percent more spent offshore, eight percent more spent locally).

52 percent of websites overseas are mobile-ready or responsive-designed, says the report, but just 28 percent of the websites of New Zealand organisations have been optimised.

Toiletries & cosmetics sector leads the way, with just over 50% optimised

Apart from Toiletries & cosmetics, for responsive design most sectors lag

Mobile readiness in the retail space

Organisations – N = 122