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. Learn more about how this Great Web Slowdown affects your bottom line. To download our free report - State of the Union: Ecommerce Page Speed & Web Performance -- please visit http://www.radware.com/winter-sotu2014

1. 2014 Ecommerce Page Speed & Web Performance
THE GREAT WEB SLOWDOWN
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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.
Web Pages Are Slower Than Ever
21%
9.3
slowdown
seconds
7.7
seconds
2014
2013
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% slowdown in just one year.
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Ecommerce Leaders
Are Slower Than the
Rest of the Pack
These Load Times
Are Not Meeting
User Demands
Looking at the top 100 ecommerce
sites, the median load time is 10
seconds – up from 8.2 seconds at
this time last year.
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.
10
8.2
seconds
seconds
2014
2013
Only 5% of top ecommerce
sites load in 3 seconds or less.
50% take 10 seconds or
more load.
60
50
40
30
9s
8s
7s
6s
5s
4s
3s
2s
1s
20
10
0
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Pages Are Taking Longer
to 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.
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The 10 Fastest Ecommerce Sites
At the beginning of 2013 there were two sites that loaded in fewer
than 2 seconds. By the end of 2013, there were none.
Now
2013
Abebooks.com (2.0s)
Groupon.com (2.2s)
Wiley.com (2.9s)
Nordstrom.com (3.0s)
Walgreens.com (3.1s)
BHphotovideo.com (3.4s)
Legacy.com (3.5s)
Amazon.com (3.6s)
CDuniverse.com (3.6s)
Amazon.co.uk (4.1s)
(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
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Why the Slowdown?
There are a number of reasons why pages are getting slower.
These two are at the top of the list:
2014
2014
2013
2013
99
93
1094
resources
resources
1436
kilobytes
kilobytes
Reason #1
Pages Are Bigger Than Ever
Reason #2
Pages Are Fatter 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.
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.
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What Impact Does This Have on the Bottom Line?
conversions
Even 100 milliseconds can make the difference between profit or loss.
The Bad 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%
bounce rate
page views
•
•
cart size
3.5% decrease •
in conversion rate •
conversions
A mere 1-second
delay can result in the
following penalties to
business metrics1:
The Good News
2.1% drop •
in cart size •
9.4% fewer •
page views •
8.3% increase •
in bounce rate •
1
Strangeloop Networks, The impact of HTML delay on mobile business metrics, November 2011
2
Real User Monitoring at Walmart.com, February 2012
Download the free report
State of the Union: Ecommerce Page Speed & Web Performance
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