This could be problematic as even one tenth of a second can make a difference to conversion rates.
Keynote Systems has released its latest report that has shown that the websites that are included in the company’s Keynote Mobile Commerce Performance Index are experiencing slower load times.
The speed of the company’s own site will load at an average rate of 5.54 seconds.
There are thirty retailers included in the index, and the average load time for mobile commerce sites had been 8.36 during the week ending October 14, it increased to 8.57 seconds throughout the week of October 21, and then swelled to 9.34 seconds for the week ending on October 28.
This mobile commerce trend is not promising at the beginning of the busiest shopping season of the year.
According to the Keynote Systems Inc. mobile performance expert, Ken Harker, “Among the top 10 sites in our latest week’s ranking, every single site was slower for the week ending Oct. 28.” He explained that this should be a matter of concern for all retailers, as load times that become ever more slow will decrease a user’s satisfaction with the general mobile commerce experience.
The last thing that retailers want is for consumers to be put off the mobile commerce environment at the most important retail shopping season of the year. Harker added that “Tenths of a second can make a difference in conversion rate, so every effort must be made to improve site performance and stand out from the competition. Even the top-performing sites still have room to improve.”
It should be noted that some regions – such as New York – have experienced a massive slowdown because of the doubling of wireless data usage, which made the overall download times slower. According to the Wireless Association, June 2011 saw 568 billion megabytes of usage, whereas the same time this year broke the 1.16 trillion megabytes mark.
Retailers should be aware of the impact that massive data use is having on the overall wireless systems, and that they must place as much effort into reducing their mobile commerce site load times as possible in order to help compensate for issues – such as overall wireless data use – that are beyond their control.
