STATE OF THE UNION
European Ecommerce Page Speed and Web Performance
STATE OF THE UNION European Ecommerce Page Speed and Web Performance Report
Table of Contents
Executive Summary..................................................................................................................................... 3 How the Top 20 Retailers Performed............................................................................................................ 3 Key Findings: Analysis and Interpretation...................................................................................................... 4
Finding #1: Page speed is not meeting the demands of online shoppers................................................... 4
Finding #2: One out of three pages contained 100+ resource requests..................................................... 4
Finding #3: Many sites do not follow core performance best practices...................................................... 5
Finding #4: Firefox 17 outperformed other browsers................................................................................ 6
Finding #5: Ecommerce web performance in Europe and the U.S. is strikingly similar................................. 7
Takeaways.................................................................................................................................................. 7 Methodology............................................................................................................................................... 8 About Radware............................................................................................................................................ 8
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STATE OF THE UNION European Ecommerce Page Speed and Web Performance Report
Executive Summary Around the world, the speed with which websites and web applications perform is emerging as a critical business issue. While this awareness lags in some parts of the world more than others, what is certain is that internet users are very aware of the issue of poor website performance, regardless of their location. In 2011, a UK survey of more than 1,500 web users found that: • 71% of respondents say they are regularly inconvenienced by slow websites. • Half believe that websites either have not improved in speed or have become slower over the past five years. • 42% of men and 35% of women have decided not to use a company again as a result of experiencing a slow website.1 In November and December of 2012, Radware conducted the first-ever survey of page load times for the IR400 -- the top 400 ecommerce sites in Europe, as listed by Internet Retailer. One of the goals of this research was to determine if European websites are meeting the performance expectations of internet users. After 3 seconds, at least 57% of online shoppers say they will abandon a site, and up to 80% will not return.2 Each site was tested across several desktop browser versions: Internet Explorer 7-9, Firefox 17, and Chrome 23. Unless otherwise specified, the results discussed in this report are for Chrome, due to the fact that it is the most widely adopted browser in the EU, with a market share of 33% as of November 2012. The results were also compared to similar data collected for leading U.S. websites.3
How the Top 20 Retailers Performed
Our key findings are described in detail in this report and summarized below:
The following is a performance snapshot for the top 20 retailers. Load times ranged between 1.72 and 11.29 seconds, with a median of 6.15 seconds.
Key Findings 1. With a load time of 7.04 seconds, the median web page does not meet the 3-second load time that most online shoppers demand. 1 out of 4 ecommerce sites takes 10+ seconds to load. 2. 1 out of 3 pages contained 100+ resource requests. 3. Many ecommerce sites do not follow core performance best practices. 4. Firefox 17 outperformed Chrome 23 and Internet Explorer 9. 5. Ecommerce web performance in Europe and the U.S. is strikingly similar.
1
Need for Speed, 1&1 Internet, 2011
2 Consumer Response to Travel Site Performance, PhoCusWright, 2010 3
Fall 2012 State of the Union: Page Speed and Website Performance, Strangeloop Networks
IR Rank
Company
Load Time (seconds)
1
Amazon.co.uk
3.84
2
Otto Group
5.22
3
Tesco
1.72
4
Staples
1.80
5
PPR
7.44
6
Home Retail Group
10.39
7
Shop Direct
1.69
8
Apple
3.71
9
Cdiscount
11.04
10
3 Suisses
4.64
11
Sainsbury’s
6.38
12
Currys
7.15
13
Carrefour
3.29
14
Vente-Privee
3.34
15
Next.co.uk
7.50
16
John Lewis
5.92
17
ASDA
7.65
18
Neckermann.at
6.91
19
Marks & Spencer
6.46
20
Comet.co.uk
11.29
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STATE OF THE UNION European Ecommerce Page Speed and Web Performance Report
Key Findings: Analysis and Interpretation Except where specifically noted, the results discussed in this report are for pages tested on Chrome 22. (Read the “Executive Summary” section of this report to understand why.)
Finding #1: Page speed is not meeting the demands of online shoppers. The median load time for first-time visitors to a home page in the European Internet Retailer 400 was 7.04 seconds. For returning visitors, the median load time was 1.81 seconds.
Number of sites
28 Median Load Time
21
7.04 seconds
14 7 0
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
16
18
20
22
24
26
28
30
Load time (seconds
These findings lag significantly behind the optimal page load time for online retailers: 3 seconds or less. After 3 seconds, at least 57% of online shoppers say they will abandon a site, and up to 80% will not return. For ecommerce sites, slow pages have been linked to significant loss across key performance indicators, including page views, conversions, and revenue.
1 out of 4 ecommerce sites takes 10+ seconds to load. It is important to note that these are median results. Looking at individual page results presents a more nuanced picture that demonstrates how many sites are not meeting consumer expectations. As the histogram on this page illustrates, many sites performed much more poorly than 7.04 seconds: 24% of the sites took 10 seconds or more to load, and 8% took 15 seconds or more.
Finding #2: One out of three pages contained 100+ resource requests. Page resources are the content objects in every web page -- including CSS, JavaScript, and image files. Each of these resources represents one server round trip that is needed to pull all the page’s resources to the user’s browser. The median IR 400 site had 76 resource requests. But, as with the load time results, this median number gives only a partial understanding of the resource issue. Looking at the full set of results, as presented in this histogram, it is noteworthy that one out of three of the pages tested contained 100 or more resource requests, and 2% contained 200 or more requests.
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STATE OF THE UNION European Ecommerce Page Speed and Web Performance Report 20
15
10
5
0 0
20
40
60
80
100
120
140
160
180
200
220
240
260
280
300
320
What this means Every page resource experiences some degree of latency -- the amount of time it takes for the host server to receive and process the request for that specific resource. Latency varies according to how far away the user is from the host server. Typically, latency is between 75 and 140 milliseconds for every resource, even for sites that use a CDN. The more resources a page contains, the greater the cumulative latency. Images and third-party scripts are the primary contributors to page bloat. Images account for more than half of a page’s total payload, while third-party scripts – such as ads, page analytics, and social sharing buttons – are the fastest-growing area of page growth. While “reduce server round trips” is a core principle of web performance optimization, this principle is easier said than followed. Ecommerce sites are in a perpetual struggle to balance the competitive advantage of offering bandwidth-intensive content against the inevitable lost revenue caused by slower pages. Site owners must consider the demands of shoppers, who expect to see multiple detailed product images, as well as marketing departments that wish to implement the latest conversion-boosting page tools.
Finding #3: Many sites do not follow core performance best practices. We measured each site’s implementation of three core performance best practices: 1. Use a CDN -- A content delivery network (CDN) is a collection of web servers distributed across multiple locations to deliver content more efficiently to users. 2. Enable keep-alives -- Too many TCP connections will slow down a site. Enabling keep-alives allows site owners to control how many times the TCP connection takes place. 3. Compress text -- Compressing resources can reduce the number of bytes sent over the network. According to our findings, most site owners are missing out on one or more opportunities to pluck low-hanging performance fruit and improve the speed of their pages.
More than three-quarters of the IR400 sites do not use a recognized content delivery network to cache static resources closer to their users. Of the 400 sites tested, only 85 (21%) use a recognized CDN.4 Site owners who do not use a CDN may not choose to do so because their consumer base is not widely dispersed; however, any company that is seeking to expand its audience geographically will quickly realize that a CDN is an essential tool. 4
A “recognized CDN” refers to any CDN listed in the directory of CDNs maintained by WebPagetest, the testing tool used to gather data for this report. While this directory is extensive, it is not exhaustive.
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STATE OF THE UNION European Ecommerce Page Speed and Web Performance Report
Keep-alives and compression are two of the easiest-to-implement techniques available to site owners, yet 9.5% of IR400 sites failed to implement keep-alives and 19.5% failed to use compression.
21% 85 out of 400 sites
use a CDN (21%)
Implementing keep-alives and compression can have a dramatic impact on page speed, improving start render time by up to 52% and load time by up to 31%.
9.5% Finding #4: Firefox 17 outperformed other browsers. The median load time for each browser suggests the following ranking:
38 out of 400 sites
do not use keep-alives (9.5%)
19.5%
1st
2nd
6.98 seconds
7.04 seconds
Firefox
78 out of 400 sites
3rd
Chrome
Internet Explorer 9 7.30 seconds
We also tested each site on Internet Explorer 7 and 8, and found that, while performance was significantly poorer in IE7, the IE8 results were not markedly different from the results for the newer browser versions:
IE8
7.37s
IE7 1
9.35s 2
3
4
5
do not use text compression (19.5%)
6
7
8
9
10
What this means While the median Firefox result was 4.4% faster than the median result for Internet Explorer 9, this finding cannot be said to definitively answer the question of which browser offers the best performance. In recent years, speed has emerged as a highly competitive issue in browser development; however, browser performance is nuanced and cannot be summed up simply. These test results are just one part of a larger picture.
Note: Our tests were able to simulate how fast each site loads for a real user who is viewing only one site at a time within the browser. The tests did not include: 1. Browser performance under stress from having multiple tabs open simultaneously. 2. Browser performance degradation over time (i.e., the longer the browser remains open, its likelihood of crashing). 3. Browser performance when visiting sites that use HTML5 or Flash, or when watching videos. 4. Usability. This often boils down to personal preference, as some users prefer minimal functionality, whereas others prefer a more feature-rich browser.
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STATE OF THE UNION European Ecommerce Page Speed and Web Performance Report
Finding #5: Ecommerce web performance in Europe and the U.S. is strikingly similar. We compared the Internet Retailer 400 findings to data from a similar study published in Fall 2012, which surveyed the top 2,000 ecommerce sites (as ranked by Alexa.com) in the United States.5 While the data sets are different in size and scope, it is very interesting to note how similar many of the findings are. Median load times The median IR400 site took 1.6% longer (7.02 seconds) to load than the median Alexa site (6.91 seconds) on Chrome. Resource requests The median IR400 page had 76 resources, compared to 77 for the median Alexa page. CDN use CDN use stood at 21% for the IR400 and 23% for the Alexa 2000. Core best practices: keep-alives and compression There was somewhat more variance in these areas. For the IR400, keep-alives were enabled in 91.5% of sites, compared to 88% of the Alexa sites. Compression was used in 80.5% of the IR400 sites, compared to 70% of the Alexa sites.
Keep-alives: 91.5% (IR400) 88% (Alexa) Compress Text: 80.5% (IR400) 70% (Alexa)
Takeaways 1. Optimal performance is a constantly moving target. As pages contain to grow in size and complexity, site owners are tasked with ensuring that their pages meet their customers’ need for pages that load in 3 seconds or less. 2. Real-user testing and benchmarking is a critical activity for site owners. With the growing number of synthetic and real-time measurement tools available, there is no reason why every site owner should not be able to keep ongoing tabs on the performance of their sites. 3. While newer browsers can sometimes offer slightly better performance than older browsers, they are not a catch-all solution. Browsers can mitigate some performance issues, but they cannot fix pages that are excessively bulky, poorly designed, or badly optimized.
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4. Site owners should ensure that their sites are grabbing the low-hanging performance fruit. Keep-alives and compression are two of the easiest-to-implement techniques available to site owners, yet 9.5% of IR400 sites failed to implement keep-alives and 19.5% failed to use compression. Combined, these two practices can have a dramatic impact on page speed, improving start render time by up to 52% and load time by up to 31%.
Fall 2012 State of the Union: Page Speed and Website Performance, Strangeloop Networks
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STATE OF THE UNION European Ecommerce Page Speed and Web Performance Report
Methodology The tests in this study were conducted using a tool called WebPagetest – an open-source project primarily developed and supported by Google – which simulates page load times from a real user’s perspective using real browsers. We tested the home page of every site in Internet Retailer’s Europe 400 list three consecutive times. (The system clears cache between page loads.) The median test result for each home page was recorded and used in our calculations. The tests were conducted over a three-week period – November 21 to December 14, 2012 – via the WebPagetest.org server in Amsterdam, NL, using the following browsers on a DSL connection: • Internet Explorer 7, 8 and 9 • Firefox 17 • Chrome 23 In very few cases, WebPagetest.org rendered a blank page or an error in which none of the page rendered. These instances are represented as null in the test appendix. Also, in very few cases, Webpagetest.org rendered a page in more then 60 seconds (the default timeout for webpagetest.org). In these cases, 60 seconds was used for the result instead of null.
About Radware Radware (NASDAQ: RDWR), is a global leader of application delivery and application security solutions for virtual and cloud data centers. Its award-winning solutions portfolio delivers full resilience for business-critical applications, maximum IT efficiency, and complete business agility. Radware’s solutions empower more than 10,000 enterprise and carrier customers worldwide to adapt to market challenges quickly, maintain business continuity and achieve maximum productivity while keeping costs down. For more information, please visit www.radware.com.
© 2013 Radware, Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Radware and all other Radware product and service names are registered trademarks of Radware in the U.S. and other countries. All other trademarks and names are the property of their respective owners.
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