Following the release of the Hitwise hotsop 50 list from IMRG and Experian in November, Mick McGuiness of Application Performance undertook some interesting analysis of the top sites. Here he explains the tests he did and the results that emerged.

The Hitwise list records the top 50 e-commerce sites in terms of volumes of traffic.  Application Performance specialises in helping customers optimise site performance and we discovered some interesting results following our tests ... 

Highlights

• In most cases pages are getting slower since the last report in May 2011
• The page load speed difference between the best and worst performing sites is huge
• By following best practices for web content performance optimization big improvements could be made, for example ...
• 40 of the top 50 sites could be at least 30% quicker.
• The key criteria for being in the top 5% are listed in the report.

Methodology

The testing methodology we followed was to use the well-respected WebPageTest.org for our measurements and we used IE7, 1.5MBps and averaged over 3 page loads from the Dublin and Gloucester test locations.

Variability in page load speeds

There was a lot of variabilty in page load times. Initial page loads with an empty cache ranged from 2.2 seconds for the best site to 16.8 seconds for the worst. Repeat views with a warm browser cache ranged from 0.5 seconds to 13.8 seconds.

Page size and number of objects

Pages are getting large in size with the average number of objects now being 86 up from 78 in our last report. The number of objects increases the number of roundtrips required from the browser to the server and therefore the page load time will be slower.

Pages are also getting larger in size too with the page average weight now 886KB compared to 671KB in our last report. The page weight means more data to be sent from the server to the browser and therefore the page load time will be slower.

The importance of speed in the e-commerce environment

There are numerous reports you can find on the internet which demonstrate the importance of fast page load times and the impact that speed has on the conversation rates and revenues for e-commerce sites.

However, common sense dictates that speed will drive customer experience, and a favourable customer experience will lead to...

• More time spent shopping rather than navigating
• More return visits
• More recommendations   

Download the Report

We intend to continue to monitor the Hitwise list. If would like to download the report or want to sign up for quarterly updates click here>>

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