Web speed has become a mainstream issue. Radware’s web performance experts performed a study to research this concern and shared their findings in this recent report. You’ll find information such as how fast are the top retail sites for real users and steps that these eRetailers can take to improve those sites. Learn more about the key findings of this study in the “Ecommerce Page Speed & Web Performance State of the Union” report for the Fall of 2013. Visit here: http://www.radware.com/stateoftheunion-fall2013 to download the full report.

1. Key Findings:
Ecommerce Page Speed
& Web Performance
State of the Union – Fall 2013

2. Web speed has become a mainstream issue.
But what impact, if any, has this had on the websites that many of us use every day?
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3. Why Retailers Need to Care About Speed
In one study, a 1-second page delay led to…
3.5
%
conversion rate decrease
2.1
%
cart size decrease
9.4
%
page view decrease
8.3
%
bounce rate increase
Strangeloop Networks, Case Study: The impact of HTML delay on mobile business metrics, November 2011
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4. Why Retailers Need to Care About Speed
Walmart.com found that…
For every 1 second of load time improvement,
the site experienced up to a 2% increase in conversions.
For every 100 milliseconds of improvement,
incremental revenues grew by up to 1%.
Real User Monitoring at Walmart.com, February 2012
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5. How Fast Are Top Retail Sites
for Real Users?

6. Test Methodology
We tested the home pages of the top 500 ecommerce sites, as
ranked by Alexa.com, over Internet Explorer 10, Firefox 22, and
Chrome 29*:
•
•
•
•
•
Load time
Time to interact (TTI) – When primary content loads in the browser
and becomes interactive
Size (KB)
Number of page resources
Adoption of core performance best practices (e.g. use a CDN,
enable keep-alives, compress resources, progressive image
rendering)
*Except where otherwise noted, results discussed in the following slides are for Chrome 29.
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7. Key Findings
1. The trend toward bigger, slower pages continues.
2. The median page takes 5.3 seconds to become interactive.
3. Three common design best practices are failing users.
4. Adoption of performance best practices is inconsistent.
5. Browser vendors are not keeping pace with page demands.
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8. Who Was Fastest?
Note that load time is not always the most meaningful
measure of a site’s performance.
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9. Finding #1: Pages Are Bigger and Slower
The median page took 8.56 seconds
to load for first-time visitors –
a 14% slowdown over the median
recorded three months ago.
The median page was 1258 KB
and contained 92 resources
(images, JavaScript, etc.).
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10. Finding #2: Median TTI Is 5.3 Seconds
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11. Finding #3: Design Best Practices Are Failing Users
When combined with performance delays, three common
design best practices negatively affect the user experience:
1. Feature banner loads last
2. Feature banner loads last… with call-to-action button at the bottom
3. Feature banner loads last… with no call-to-action
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12. Finding #4: Performance Best Practices Are Inconsistent
Among the top 100 sites, adoption of some best practices is nearing saturation,
while others remain neglected.
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13. Finding #5: Browser Vendors Are Not Keeping Pace
Across major browsers, performance is trending downward
as vendors struggle to keep pace with the demands
of today’s large, complex, dynamic web pages.
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14. Takeaways
1. Performance is still a critical issue for leading ecommerce sites.
2. Site owners are relying on CDNs and ADCs to shoulder the
performance optimization burden.
3. There are significant untapped opportunities to make
acceleration gains.
4. Site owners need to study the performance of their pages
in real-world scenarios.
There are 12 things site owners can do to cure
performance pains.
Download our free report to learn more.
http://www.radware.com/stateoftheunion-fall2013
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