Mobile web shoppers may be stalled and take as much as four seconds longer on
some retailers' mobile web sites than others. The latest Gomez study compares and ranks the mobile web performance of the nation's top retailers.
Between November 1 and November 15, Gomez monitored the mobile Web
performance of the home pages of 14 top retailers, testing from
different geographies and mobile carriers to measure their response
times and availability when accessed from a popular cell phone. The
Gomez Mobile Retail Web Performance benchmark found that Amazon's
mobile site loaded fastest at 2.8 seconds and had top availability at
99.86 percent.
The new benchmark also found that the average response time for the
mobile websites tested was 4.7 seconds -- over 50 percent slower than
the average response times of the top retailers' "traditional" Web
sites, according to Gomez's current Retail Home Page Web Performance
Benchmark. The new benchmark also reported that retailers' mobile home
page availability (uptime) averaged at 98.74 percent -- by comparison,
the average availability for "traditional" retail Web sites was 99.76
percent.
While some might accept mobile Web sites performing slower, given
the bandwidth of wireless networks, a recent survey of 1,000 mobile Web
users found that the majority actually expect Web sites to load as
quickly, almost as quickly, or faster on their mobile phone, compared
to their home or work computer. The same survey also revealed that two
out of three people have encountered problems accessing mobile Web
sites, with slow load times their chief complaint. 85 percent said they
are only willing to retry a mobile Web site two times or less if it
does not work initially, and 40 percent said they'd likely visit a
competitor's mobile Web site instead.
"This holiday season will be the first true test of the performance
of retailers' mobile sites," said Matt Poepsel, VP of Performance
Strategies, Gomez division, Compuware. "And while we know that online
shoppers have low tolerance for long wait times for traditional online
shopping Web pages, it will be interesting to see whether they will be
willing to sacrifice speed for the convenience of mobile browsing and
shopping. The wide disparity found in the new Gomez mobile benchmark
highlights that many retailers have more work to do to improve their
mobile Web performance or risk losing a potential slice of the holiday
action."
The Gomez Mobile Retail Web Performance benchmark joins Gomez's
existing benchmarks that measure and rank the Web performance of the
nation's top retailers and can be accessed at:
To see the full benchmark data, please visit: http://benchmarks.gomez.com/viewbenchmark.php?btype=105&bcategory=mobile.