The sporting goods store has managed to speed up its page load time by a second.
According to the latest statistics from Keynote Systems, Dick’s Sporting Goods, the decision to slash eight objects from its mobile commerce page has improved its performance by reducing its page load time by a second.
Keynote feels that the retailer’s decision paid off as the improvement to the site performance was meaningful.
On March 21, Dick’s took its mobile commerce website objects down from 36 to 28 so that its average page load time was able to shrink by a second, which is an important amount of time, according to Keynote. Page objects can consist of anything from text boxes, images, web analytics calls, tracking pixels, and others. It was the Cascading Style Sheet and JavaScript files that were reduced by the retailer when it made the latest changes to its smartphone friendly site.
That said, Keynote feels that while the mobile commerce load speed is improved, it could do better.
Keynote web and mobile performance expert, Joe Flake, said that “At just over 12 seconds to load, Dick’s is still a bit slower than the single-digit times posted by the leaders on the index, but it’s a nice step in the right direction.” He pointed out that the website does make several analytics calls. He added that they could be at the point at which the number of analytics calls that are being made could start to have a significant impact on the overall load time of the mobile commerce pages on the site.
Flake also stated that while the difference that the analytics calls make is often mixed in among the various other objects when it comes to a sizeable desktop page, when it comes to a mobile commerce website, the time that is added becomes considerably greater. “There’s a valid tradeoff between analytics and performance that must be considered.”
An effective page design will order analytics calls at the end of the page load, according to Flake, as they are invisible to consumers. That way, the time they take to load won’t be as noticeable to those using the site. That said, the mobile commerce data recorded by Keynote includes the entire page load, including the added time that the site visitor likely wouldn’t see.
