A Holiday Retail in Review: Performance Lessons for 2014

A Holiday ReviewPerformance Lessons for 2014

Ken Harker, Senior Consultant

January 2014

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Some of the numbers are still coming in, but…

• US online and e-commerce holiday retail increased 9.3%

• UK online holiday retail sales increased 19.2% from 2012

• Overall online retail sales in the US for 2014 may reach $300 billion (Forrester)

• Online experience will influence an additional $1.3 trillion in retail purchases (Forrester)

Another Record Year for Online Retail

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The Mobile Madness Grows

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Retailers surveyed for Forrester Research’s “State of Retailing Online 2014” study ranked mobile as their TOP PRIORITY

And yet, most retailers are NOT investing in their mobile sites as much as their desktop sites

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Real Madness Is Not Being on Mobile At All

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Only 72 of the top 100 e-retailers have fully functional m-commerce sites optimized for smartphones. (Internet Retailer)

2013 Internet Retailer Mobile Commerce Top 500 Guide

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The Price is Right

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On the web, there is always a lower price.

High performing mobile web sites are the ones that consumers will turn to for their comparison shopping.

Expectations

On the desktop: 2 seconds or faster

What Do Retail Site Customers Expect?

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On mobile: 3 seconds or faster

• Delays in page load time result in increased abandonment, decreased loyalty, and loss of revenue

• Even very small delays will drive your potential customers to the competition or keep them from returning to your site

• Success is measured in milliseconds, not seconds

The Challenge to Retailers

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Keynote Online Holiday Shopping Study

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During the 2013 holiday season, Keynote measured the performance and availability of 13 top online retailers

• Measurements were taken on desktop browsers, smartphone browsers, and tablet browsers

• Smartphone and tablet measurements were made on 3G mobile network connections in New York and San Francisco

• Desktop measurements were taken on high-speed, low-latency network connections using real browsers

One Web, Three Screens

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The Sites in the Study

AmazonApple StoreBest BuyCDWDellHPNewegg

Office DepotOffice MaxOverstockSearsSony StylesWalmart

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The Keynote Holiday Retail Study measured a typical user journey through the desktop and mobile sites

1. Start at the Home Page2. Search for a product3. Filter the search results4. View product details5. Add the product to a cart

What Was Measured

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Desktop Results

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Online retailers had their best showing on desktop this year

Average time to conduct the purchase path transaction was 22.8 seconds

Desktop

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Across all measured sites, the slowest step in the online purchase path was retrieving the results for a product search

Search Results was the slowest step on 46% of the sites in the study

Desktop: Search

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The Slowest Step was Search Results

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• The fastest site on Desktop was Apple, averaging only 14.0 seconds to complete the entire transaction

Desktop: Speed

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The most available site on Desktop was HP, with an overall transaction uptime of 99.6%

Only one site had a sustained downtime period

Desktop: Availability

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Smartphone Results

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Smartphone

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• Nearly all pages designed for the smartphone screen size and for access over mobile connections

Overall, the user experience on smartphones was much slower than on desktop

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Smartphone: Slow Pages

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The slowest page on the smartphone transactions, by far, was the Home page

Search Results pages were the next slowest occasionally taking over 20 seconds

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Smartphone: Fastest Sites

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The fastest mobile site measured was the Sony Style store, coming in with an average time of 19.7 seconds

The slowest of the smartphone sites actually was not Apple

Tablet Results

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Tablet

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None of the sites in the Keynote holiday study have pages optimized for tablet users over mobile network connections

Retailers are gambling that tablet users are always on fast WiFi connections

Tablet

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Consumers using tablets on 3G mobile network connections during the holiday shopping season saw very poor performance

The average transaction time was 61.4 secondsThree times as slow as the desktop or smartphone user experience

Tablet

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Lessons for success in 2014

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• Slow page load times continue to be the biggest point of frustration for mobile web users

•Mobile needs to be a continuing focus for e-retailer to succeed in the marketplace

Eliminate frustration with Mobile

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What can I do to improve my mobile user experience?

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1. Dress Light

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Be disciplined about loading as few assets on the page as possible

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Different browsers/phones have different numbers of parallel threads

2. Avoid Long Lines

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3. Bundle up

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Employ optimization techniques that reduce the number of HTTP requests needed to fetch image content

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4. Anticipate the Rush

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You know it’s coming, so why wait until next year to prepare for the holidays?

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Good marketing can help to improve conversion rates, but if too much leads to downtime, slow speeds and site abandonment you’ve gone too far.

5. Resist the Marketing

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No one says that you need to go at it alone, and in many cases you shouldn’t.

6. Partner Up

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‘Stuff’ Happens

6. Expect the Unexpected

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Conclusions

2014 is a New Year!

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Thank YouKen Harker

Senior Consultant, Keynote

ken.harker@keynote.com