Radware Study Reveals 76% Of Travel Industry Websites Aren’t Fully Optimized For Mobile Customers


MAHWAH, N.J. December 16, 2015 02:00 PM

Radware® (NASDAQ: RDWR), a leading provider of cyber security and application delivery solutions ensuring optimal service level for applications in virtual, cloud and software defined data centers, released a report entitled 2015 State of the Union: Mobile Performance of the Top Travel Industry Sites: Do Your Customers Want To Take A Vacation From Your Slow Site?

Although half of all online travel bookings in the U.S. are expected to occur via mobile device in 2016,1 a new Radware study found that 76% of the industry’s top 100 sites are slow to load, paralyzed by third-party scripts and trackers, and image-heavy. In fact, the average page took 6.7 seconds to load on the iPhone 6, slower than the 4 second ideal time tolerated by shoppers.2

These slow load times create an increase in consumer frustration and, ultimately site abandonment. A recent study of mobile travel site abandonment showed 36% of respondents cited slow loading times as their chief cause for site abandonment.3

Today, consumers predominantly use mobile devices to book travel. By the end of 2015, mobile-booked travel is expected to reach $52.08 billion.1 With this level of exponential growth, travel websites have a lot to gain by preparing for the volume of mobile traffic they’ll be seeing in 2016.

Kent Alstad, VP of Acceleration, Radware said, “Consumer habits are changing. Mobile devices are always within arm’s reach, so it comes as no surprise that consumers are reaching for them as they research and book travel. When planning for the New Year, travel companies must consider whether or not their websites are optimized for mobile, including the length of time it takes for a page to load and not just if it is mobile-responsive. If consumer habits shift and your site isn’t in shape, you’ll be booking them a one-way ticket to your competitor’s door.”

Slow performance has a significant negative effect on business metrics, from shopping cart abandonment to brand perception. Radware tested the performance of 100 leading global travel sites with leading devices such as the Apple iPhone 6 and Samsung Galaxy S6 to obtain data around their performance against consumer expectations and projected industry growth for 2016. 

The Radware report finds that there are a number of factors contributing to poor performance that can be fairly easily remedied:

  • Overloaded with Requests – Many of the sites have more than 62 requests on their home page for images, scripts and CSS files. Each request incurs latency and streamlining the page requests could improve performance.
  • Image Heavyweights – Mobile devices don’t have the processing power of laptops or desktops yet many sites are trying to replicate the full site experience while inadvertently compromising the user experience. Images often make up approximately a quarter of the weight of a page on average and are often improperly formatted causing high resolutions to waste bandwidth, processing and cache space.
  • Responsive Web Designs (RWD) Typically Optimize Viewing but Not Performance – Although RWD crafts an optimal viewing experience across a wide-range of devices and screens, it creates a complexity that can seriously slow down performance. It is possible to build a responsive site that is both fast and responsive but it requires knowledge of both design and front-end performance optimization.
  • Less Than A Quarter of Travel Sites Are Ready for 2016: Only 24% of the 100 mobile travel sites tested loaded in the ideal time of 4 seconds or less across devices
  • More Screens, One Speed: 85% of mobile users expect pages to load as fast as or faster than they load on the desktop4
  • Every Asset Counts: 25% of a page’s weight came from images on average, and the average mobile travel site came in at over a megabyte, past the threshold for mobile’s fastest pages
  • Your Brand Is Tested on Mobile: 65% of customers say their opinion of a brand was affected by their online experience,5 and 33% of users will go to a competitor’s site after a negative mobile experience6 http://portal.sliderocket.com/AHJJM/Tealeaf-Mobile-Transactions-Survey

To learn more, please download the report, Mobile Performance of the Top Travel Industry Sites: Do Your Customers Want to Take a Vacation from Your Slow Site?  Additionally, links to the infographic can be found here.

Methodology

Radware conducted this study within the United States in November 2015. Real-world performance of the top 100 global mobile travel industry websites, as ranked by SimilarWeb Ltd., was tested. Tested sites were accessed using actual mobile devices connected to the AT&T 4G/LTE data network.

THIS PRESS RELEASE BASED IS PROVIDED FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY. THESE MATERIALS ARE NOT INTENDED TO BE AN INDICATOR OF RADWARE'S BUSINESS PERFORMANCE OR OPERATING RESULTS FOR ANY PRIOR, CURRENT OR FUTURE PERIOD.

Sources

1eMarketer, By 2016, Most Digital Travel Bookers Will Use Mobile Devices, November 2015

22Keynote, The State of Mobile Software Quality, March 2014

3Jumio, $24.5 Billion in Revenue Left on the Table by U.S. Retailers and Financial Services Last Year Due to Poor Mobile User Experience, August 2015

4IBM/Tealeaf, A Report on the Mobile Customer Experience, Based on the Harris Interactive 2011 Mobile Transactions Survey, March 2011

5Razorfish, FEED Digital Brand Experience Study, 2009

6Harris Interactive, Tealeaf Mobile Transactions Survey, March 2011

About Radware

Radware (NASDAQ: RDWR), is a global leader of application delivery and cyber security solutions for virtual, cloud and software defined data centers. Its award-winning solutions portfolio delivers service level assurance for business-critical applications, while maximizing IT efficiency.

Radware’s solutions empower more than 10,000 enterprise and carrier customers worldwide to adapt to market challenges quickly, maintain business continuity and achieve maximum productivity while keeping costs down.  For more information, please visit www.radware.com

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©2015 Radware Ltd. All rights reserved. Radware and all other Radware product and service names are registered trademarks or trademarks of Radware in the U.S. and other countries. All other trademarks and names are property of their respective owners.

Safe Harbor Statement

This press release may contain statements concerning Radware’s future prospects that are “forward-looking statements” under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Statements preceded by, followed by, or that otherwise include the words "believes", "expects", "anticipates", "intends", "estimates", "plans", and similar expressions or future or conditional verbs such as "will", "should", "would", "may" and "could" are generally forward-looking in nature and not historical facts. For example, when we say “consumer habits shift and your site isn’t in shape, you’ll be booking them a one-way ticket to your competitor’s door,” that includes both content and page load time, we use a forward-looking statement. Because such statements deal with future events, they are subject to various risks and uncertainties and actual results, expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements, could differ materially from Radware's current forecasts and estimates. Factors that could cause or contribute to such differences include, but are not limited to: the impact of global economic conditions and volatility of the market for our products; changes in the competitive landscape; inability to realize our investment objectives; timely availability and customer acceptance of our new and existing products; risks and uncertainties relating to acquisitions; the impact of economic and political uncertainties and weaknesses in various regions of the world, including the commencement or escalation of hostilities or acts of terrorism; Competition in the market for Application Delivery and Network Security solutions and our industry in general is intense; and other factors and risks on which we may have little or no control. This list is intended to identify only certain of the principal factors that could cause actual results to differ. For a more detailed description of the risks and uncertainties affecting Radware, reference is made to Radware’s Annual Report on Form 20-F which is on file with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the other risk factors discussed from time to time by Radware in reports filed with, or furnished to, the SEC. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date on which they are made and, except as required by applicable law, Radware undertakes no commitment to revise or update any forward-looking statement in order to reflect events or circumstances after the date any such statement is made.  Radware’s public filings are available from the SEC’s website at www.sec.gov or may be obtained on Radware’s website at www.radware.com.

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