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Download the free reportState of the Union: Ecommerce Page Speed & Web Performance

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Wiley.com (2.9s)Nordstrom.com (3.0s)Walgreens.com (3.1s)

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Amazon.com (3.6s)CDuniverse.com (3.6s)

Amazon.co.uk (4.1s)

2013(1.0s) CVS.com(1.9s) Polo.com(2.0s) eCrater.com(2.1s) Abebooks.com(3.0s) BHphotovideo.com(3.2s) JCrew.com(3.3s) Amazon.com(3.7s) ShopAtHome.com(3.9s) Etsy.com(3.9s) Gamefly.com

2014 Ecommerce Page Speed & Web Performance

We tested the load times of the top 500 retail web sites and found that pages are bigger and slower than they were one year ago. Here’s why, and how this affects the bottom line.

THE GREAT WEB SLOWDOWNL O A D I N G

L O A D I N G

L O A D I N G

L O A D I N G

L O A D I N G

21%slowdown

7.7seconds

9.3seconds

20132014

Web Pages Are Slower Than Ever

Ecommerce Leaders Are Slower Than the

Rest of the PackThese Load Times Are Not Meeting User Demands

The median top 500 ecommerce home page takes 9.3 seconds to load. A year ago, the median page took 7.7 seconds to load. That’s a 21% slow-down in just one year.

The 10 Fastest Ecommerce SitesAt the beginning of 2013 there were two sites that loaded in fewer

than 2 seconds. By the end of 2013, there were none.

Why the Slowdown?There are a number of reasons why pages are getting slower.

These two are at the top of the list:

L O A D I N G

What Impact Does This Have on the Bottom Line?Even 100 milliseconds can make the difference between profit or loss.

Looking at the top 100 ecommerce sites, the median load time is 10 seconds – up from 8.2 seconds at this time last year.

Pages Are Taking Longerto Become Interactive

Time to Interact (TTI) refers to how long it takes for a page’s primary content to load and become usable. In 2013, the median TTI was 4.9 seconds. Now it’s 5 seconds.

This may not be a huge increase, but the fact that this number is creeping up is a worrying trend.

The majority of online shoppers will abandon a page after waiting 3 seconds for it to load. The maximum wait time threshold is 10 seconds.

Only 5% of top ecommerce sites load in 3 seconds or less.

50% take 10 seconds or more load.

60

50

40

30

20

10

0

10seconds

2014

8.2seconds

2013

9s8s7s6s5s4s3s2s1s

Reason #1Pages Are Bigger Than Ever

The median ecommerce page contains 99 resources (things like image and CSS files). A year ago, the median page contained 93 resources. Each of these resources incurs latency, and this latency adds up to slower load times.

The median page is 1436 KB in size, a huge increase – 31% to be precise – over the median page weight of 1094 KB just one year ago.

The Bad News

A mere 1-second delay can result in the following penalties to

business metrics1:

3.5% decrease •in conversion rate •

2.1% drop • in cart size •

9.4% fewer • page views •

8.3% increase •in bounce rate •

The Good News

• For every 1 second of load time improvement, up to a 2% increase in conversions. • For every 100 milliseconds of improvement, incremental revenues grew by up to 1%

Reason #2Pages Are Fatter Than Ever

1 Strangeloop Networks, The impact of HTML delay on mobile business metrics, November 20112 Real User Monitoring at Walmart.com, February 2012

conversions

cart size

page views

bounce rate

conv

ersio

ns

$

To put it another way, imagine what would happen if you gained 31% of your current body weight and then tried to put on your pants. This is roughly what it’s like trying to stuff fatter pages

through an Internet pipe that has stayed the same size.

93resources

99resources 1094

kilobytes

2014

2013 2013

1436kilobytes

2014