Mobile retail sites perform well, but are too slow to load, according to Keynote study

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International shoppers looking to research and make purchases on their smartphones are experiencing delays and are having to wait for an average of 15.95 seconds for sites to load.

Keynote Competitive Research, the industry analysis group of Keynote Systems, is tracking the mobile site performance of 21 of the top retailers across seven countries.  Results for April show that the international average for site availability is 98.39%, however consumers around the world are experiencing long waits for their chosen site to fully load.

German consumers have the quickest performing mobile retails sites, with an average site load time of 5.63 seconds for April. UK sites were the second fastest overall with an average waiting time of 7.04 seconds for UK sites John Lewis, Marks and Spencer, Next and Tesco to load.

Swedish retailers were the slowest overall of those monitored, with an average load time of over half a minute for April - 32.26 seconds.

Keynote Systems has monitored the performance of top retail sites from Australia, France, Germany, Japan, Sweden, UK and the USA throughout April, results below;

Rank Country Site - Average load time (seconds)

1. DE - OTTO  4.70
2. DE - ALDI  5.69
3.  FR - Chanel  5.97 
4. UK - Marks & Spencer 6.03
5. UK - Tesco  6.10
6. DE - Amazon  6.49
7. USA - Walmart  7.71
8. UK - John Lewis  7.79
9. UK - Next  8.24
10. FR - Fnac  8.25
11. JP - Amazon  9.50
12. AU - Woolworths  10.23
13. AU - Myer  10.76
14. SE - H&M  13.51
15. USA - Macy's  15.60
16. USA - Costco  19.19
17. AU - JB Hi-Fi  19.70
18. JP - Rakuten  23.47
19. SE - Ellos  29.45
20. SE - Ahlens  53.81
21. FR - Carrefour  62.75

Rank Country Site - Average availability (%)

1. FR - Fnac  99.79
2. DE - Amazon  99.71
3. SE - H&M  99.69
4. JP - Amazon  99.62
5. FR - Chanel  99.58
6. UK - Marks & Spencer 99.57
7. DE - ALDI  99.56
8. USA - Costco  99.45
9. AU - Woolworths  99.44
10. USA - Walmart  99.44
11. UK - John Lewis  99.43
12. AU - JB Hi-Fi  99.37
13. DE - OTTO  99.31
14. AU - Myer  99.23
15. UK - Next  99.16
16. USA - Macy's  99.03
17. UK - Tesco  99.02
18. FR - Carrefour  98.45
19. SE - Ellos  98.39
20. SE - Ahlens  97.12
21. JP - Rakuten  87.88

"It's encouraging to see the impressive availability of mobile retail sites this month, with 17 of the 21 sites monitored around the world achieving scores above 99%" said Robert Castley, lead solutions consultant at Keynote Systems.  "However, the speed of some of the sites, especially in Sweden and the USA, has led to some fairly disappointing results."

"According to the IMRG, m-retail recorded huge growth in the UK over the past 12 months with 300% year-on-year growth for Q1 2012," continued Castley.  "While this trend goes hand in hand with the increasing number of UK consumers owning smartphones, retailers are going to need to continue to focus on mobile site optimisation if they want to stand out from competitors and make the most from the number of shoppers looking to spend using their phones. Retailers therefore need to ensure that their mobile specific sites and apps are performing as they should across all handsets and all networks, so that shoppers can quickly and easily view and purchase the products they want without being put off by loading delays and errors."

The mobile sites of these retailers were measured using a webkit based smartphone browser every hour from London, Nrnberg, Paris, San Francisco, New York, Stockholm, Sydney and Tokyo.  To subscribe to Keynote System's weekly performance indices visit: http://programs.keynote.com/subscriptions/kcr_performance_indices.html