Erratic e-tailer performance in Q3
The UK’s leading online retailers are suffering from excessive periods of website downtime, risking both revenue and reputation,Site Confidence has found. With the crucial Christmas shopping period fast approaching, many e-tailers are jeopardising their relationships with consumers.
The website monitoring and load testing firm, an NCC Group company, has released its Quarterly Online Retail Report, which analyses the online performance of the country’s top 50 e-tailers over a three-month period. Both download speeds and website downtime are recorded. From 1st July to 30th September, the research reveals inconsistent performances – whilst average download speeds improved by nearly 50% on Q2, outages were significantly worse.
In practice, this means that online shoppers have experienced websites that are quicker to load when online, but are spending far greater periods of time not working.
The e-tailers recorded average download speeds of 6.08 seconds using a 2 Mbps connection speed, very close to their 6 second target and a marked improvement on the 12.47 seconds demonstrated in Q2.
Website outages averaged out at a massive 15 hours 44 minutes over the three months compared to just 3 hours 41 minutes for Q2. This includes several e-tailers recording over 10 days of downtime. However, with these results removed, downtime still averaged at 3 hours 42 minutes, a figure marginally worse than the second quarter, and 35% worse than Q1.
Bob Dowson, director at Site Confidence, part of NCC Group, said: “There are some concerning results here ahead of the Christmas shopping period, which is obviously crucial to most retailers. Whilst it’s encouraging to see such a marked increase in download speeds between the second and third quarters, the downtime results are extremely erratic.
“For some online retailers to be recording over 10 days of downtime in three months is a major problem and will probably equate to significant amounts of lost revenue.
“Even with those extreme results removed, downtime has been increasing over the past three quarters, and it needs to be addressed now. Web performance is a multifaceted thing – it’s pointless focusing on speed and neglecting functionality.
“Online retailers are operating in a packed marketplace at a time when consumers are being very careful with their money, and websites that don’t make shopping simple will quickly send customers elsewhere.”
Notes
Performance data (top 50 UK e-tailers) 01/07/2011 – 30/09/2011
Average downtime: 15 hours 44 minutes (3 hours 42 minutes with results over 10 days removed)
Average download speed: 6.08 seconds (Connection speed of 2 Mbps)