Clunky and slow retail websites are frustrating consumers, and their complaints aren’t always being heard by site owners. In fact, websites for the top 500 U.S. retailers are generally 14 percent slower since summer 2013 and 16 percent slower than autumn 2012, according to findings from a recent survey.
"In just the last few years, web page speed has migrated from the fringe to center stage, emerging as not just a technology trend, but a hot-button business issue," said Tammy Everts, web performance evangelist, Radware (News), which funded the survey.
The survey, titled "State of the Union: Ecommerce Page Speed & Web Performance, Fall 2013," measures and tracks the performance and page composition of the top 500 U.S. retail websites (as ranked by analytics firm Alexa.com) over a two-day period.
Among the findings, the survey results discovered the median page takes 5.3 seconds to become interactive. Sites have experienced a slowdown of 8 percent since summer 2013, when the median time to interact (TTI) was 4.9 seconds. Ideally, pages should be interactive in three seconds or less.
"Numerous studies have found an irrefutable connection between load times and key performance indicators, such as conversion rates and revenue increases,” Everts continued. “Site owners need to understand that optimizing performance is much more nuanced than just pushing out faster pages to customers: it's about understanding what users want from every page of your site, then fine-tuning those pages to ensure that critical content loads first instead of last. A site owner who neglects core performance best practices is missing out on significant opportunities to make relatively easy performance gains."
The survey also found that retail sites made at least one of three critical mistakes in the design and presentation of their feature content: loading feature banners last; placing a call-to-action at the bottom of feature banners; and/or not implementing a call-to-action at all.
Adopting these best practices is inconsistent, even among leading sites. Among the top 100 sites, adoption of some best practices is nearing the saturation point, whereas others remain neglected.
Additionally, the survey found browser vendors are not keeping pace with page demands. Across all three major browsers, performance is trending downward as browser vendors struggle to keep pace with the demands of today's large, complex, dynamic web pages.
The survey’s goal is to gain ongoing visibility into the real-world performance of leading ecommerce sites, learn how these sites perform for visitors using the Internet under normal browsing conditions and provide strategies and best practices to enable site owners to enhance site performance.
Website load tests were conducted between August 29-30, 2013, using Internet Explorer 10, Firefox 22 and Chrome 29 on a DSL connection. The tests in this study were performed using WebPagetest.org, an open source project primarily developed by Google (News), which simulates page load times from a real user's perspective. Radware tested the home page nine times of every site listed in the Alexa Retail 500.