FREE REPORT: 2012 State of the Union for E-Commerce Page Speed and Website Performance

The average e-commerce website takes 10 seconds to load, web pages are getting bigger, and Internet Explorer 9 outperforms other browsers. These were just a few of the findings of our second annual State of the Union: E-Commerce Page Speed and Website Performance.

Trying to identify performance trends over long periods of time is like aiming at a constantly moving target. This is why we've undertaken an ongoing initiative to benchmark and analyze the performance of the home pages of the same top 2,000 Alexa-ranked retail websites.

For the past two years, we've measured performance criteria such as load time, page composition, and adoption of core optimization best practices. In this report, we look at the newest round of data on its own, and as compared with data from the previous year.

A few key findings:

• The average site is 10% faster now than it was one year ago. While this is encouraging, it is far from the ideal load time of 2 seconds, as identified by decades of research into human-computer interaction.
• Top-ranked sites are slower, not faster, than the rest of the pack. 
• Web pages are getting bigger, year after year. The average home page contains 98 page objects, a 13% increase from last year. (For a bit of context: In 1995, the average page contained just 2.3 objects.)
• Internet Explorer 9 outperformed other browsers.

What does it all mean? Our CEO Jonathan Bixby puts it like this:

"The key takeaway here is that the pursuit of faster websites is a neverending race. As pages continue to grow in size and complexity, many site owners are barely managing to stay ahead. Newer browsers help somewhat – as does using a content delivery network to cache your content closer to your visitors – but only somewhat. Site owners who want to do more than keep their heads above water need to expand their acceleration toolkit."

Download the free report: 2012 Annual State of the Union: E-Commerce Page Speed and Website Performance

Wine.com optimizes site by 45%, reduces page load to 2 seconds

In a recent interview, Strangeloop customer Wine.com told Retail Touch Points why they chose us to accelerate their premiere e-commerce site:

"A four-second download once was acceptable but today is far too slow, given advancements in computer technology and growing consumer expectations," stated Geoffrey Smalling, CTO of Wine.com. "Two seconds was an ambitious goal but we had to reach it or lose potential customers, especially first-time visitors."

Mr. Smalling talked about the challenges of optimizing content-rich pages for every browser type, the complexity of optimizing location-sensitive pages for customers around the world, why the pursuit of high-performing web pages is a neverending task, and how the Strangeloop Site Optimizer addresses all of these challenges. 

"It was an engineering challenge for Strangeloop to develop optimizations based on our unique, regulated business," said Mr. Smalling. "Strangeloop best handled enterprise scale via appliance or cloud and has an aggressive plan for further product development to keep us at the front edge of acceleration."

"The promise of a front-end optimization tool like the one we selected from Strangeloop Networks is that we don’t have to think about it ― the optimization is done for us. That promise has included a 45% improvement in speed on our New York homepage, 39% on Virginia’s and 35% on the Los Angeles page."

Read the full article on Retail Touch Points.

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Advanced Mobile Optimization: How does it work, and how do you measure success?

If you're in the San Francisco area, join Strangeloop president Joshua Bixby on Thursday, January 12th, as he speaks at a meeting of the SF/Silicon Valley Web Performance Meetup Group.

Joshua will walk through several advanced mobile optimization techniques and explain how they work around the unique constraints (and opportunities!) of the mobile platform. Joshua will also present data from detailed case studies that show how real-world companies have optimized their mobile sites, and as a result have experienced dramatic improvements in key performance indicators such as page views, conversions, cart size, and revenue.

Joshua's research is based on the development and beta deployment of the Strangeloop Mobile Site Optimizer, the most advanced front-end tool currently available for delivering optimized pages to mobile devices.

The event is free to Meetup group members, but spaces are limited and filling up fast. Go to the event page to learn more.