Study: Retailer web pages load too slowly

Tel Aviv, Israel -- The average online shopper expects a Web page to render in less than three seconds, but analysis of the load times of the top 100 retailers reveals that the median home page on a desktop takes 6.5 seconds to render its primary content and 11.4 seconds to fully load.



According to new studies on e-commerce and mobile commerce from application delivery and security solutions provider Radware, only 12% of the top 100 retail sites rendered feature content in fewer than three seconds on the desktop and 15% of full-site pages loaded in fewer than four seconds on the iPhone 5s.



Other key findings from Radware’s reports on the top 100 retail sites include:



• The median page is 19% larger than it was one year ago.

• 22% of sites took 10 or more seconds just to be become interactive.

• 2% took 20 seconds or longer to become interactive.

• While images comprise 50% of the average page’s total weight, 35% of sites failed to compress images, a technique that could significantly reduce payload and streamline page rendering.



Key findings from the mobile report include:



• 81% of sites automatically serve an m-dot version of the home page to smartphones.

• 20% of m-dot sites do not allow shoppers to access the full site.

• 8% of the top 100 retailers serve a tablet-optimized version of their site to tablets.

• Median load times varied across tablets, ranging from 5.7 seconds for the Galaxy Note to 8.1 seconds for the Nexus 7.