Adpost, IKEA Named Fastest eCommerce Websites

ECommerce businesses may want to rethink their web optimization approach after reading the findings published in Radware’s newest report.

The application solution provider found that eCommerce page load times rose by more than 10 percent from 2012 to 2013 in their new study, entitled “State of the Union: eCommerce Page Speed & Web Performance Summer 2013.”

Published on July 23, the study showed that the median web page took 7.72 seconds to fully load for first-time visitors. This figure was up 13.7 percent from the 6.79 seconds Radware observed in its Spring 2012 survey.

Radware’s researchers tested the homepages of 500 retail websites on Internet Explorer 10, Chrome 27 and Firefox 21 during June and July. Its goal was to determine how popular eCommerce websites were performing, understand how eCommerce load times affected users and help eCommerce businesses improve their best practices.

Researchers judged eCommerce websites based on load time, the time it took for all of a page’s elements to display, and time to interact (TTI), a metric designed to calculate when the page became useable to the consumer.

In this PYMNTS.com Data Point, we’ll break down the report’s main findings to highlight the fastest eCommerce sites on the web and explore the approaches competitors can adopt to become more like these market leaders.

Homepage Load Times Aren’t The Only Problem

Radware found that eCommerce sites are making users wait too long to access the most important elements of their web pages. Median featured content took 4.9 seconds to display during the study period: a figure that was 2 seconds above ideal load time.

ECommerce site users are also waiting too long to interact with pages. The median TTI for all studied eCommerce sites was 4.9 seconds, or nearly 3 seconds above what the report called the ideal TTI of 2 seconds or less. Nine percent of the observed websites had a TTI of 8 seconds or more.

Radware suggested these load times are not only bad for users, they’re bad for business as well. It cited past research that suggests that a site that loads in 3 seconds experiences a 22 percent lower conversion rate than a site with an optimal TTI of 2 seconds.

IKEA Claims Fastest Load Time, Adpost Sees Best TTI

Among the top 100 retail sites surveyed, IKEA.com had the lowest traditional load time. IKEA.com users waited 1.85 seconds for all page elements to display during the study period. Ranked by this metric, AbeBooks, Pixmania, Groupon and Adpost rounded out the top five.

Radware named Adpost.com the fastest site in terms of TTI, with a time of 0.7 seconds. Groupon, AbeBooks, Netflix and H&M followed with TTIs of 1.5 seconds or less.

How Can eCommerce Sites Improve Load Time?

Radware suggested that although IKEA had the fastest load time, eCommerce companies could benefit by emulating Adpost. It called TTI “a more meaningful indicator of a page’s ability to deliver a satisfactory user experience to the visitor.”

This may be good news for eCommerce sites with high load times, as TTI improvements don’t need to go hand-in-hand with load time decreases.

For example, Netflix’s average load time was 4.37 seconds, nearly 3 seconds above its TTI. Netflix was able to achieve a low TTI despite its average load time because it optimized primary, consumer-facing resources to load first. This means that on a Netflix.com page, social widgets and page analytics were among the last components to load. 

For Radware’s complete recommendations on how eCommerce businesses can best improve their website optimization strategies, download the full report here.