UK retailers’ mobile web offerings have topped both the download speed and availability charts in July out of 24 top retail mobile sites across eight countries monitored by Keynote Systems. Next achieved the fastest average time of 4.80 seconds and John Lewis an impressive 100% availability for the month.
Keynote Systems has monitored the performance of top retail sites from Australia, France, Germany, Japan, Sweden, UK and USA throughout July, and found that the UK sites performed well in July, with all of the sites monitored – John Lewis, Tesco, Marks and Spencer and Next, all incidentally powered by Usablenet – all scoring in the top third of the response time index.
All of the UK sites achieved download times of less than seven seconds compared to the French site, Carrefour, which had an average download time of 51.91 seconds. The UK sites monitored also all had over 99% availability for July.
All of the UK sites improved on their performance from June, demonstrating a concerted focus on mobile as a retail channel as the proliferation of smartphones, the sophistication of their capabilities and the increased speed of networks has led consumers to reach for their mobiles before turning to their laptops for online browsing.
“It’s great to see UK retailers making positive changes as they realise the importance of mobile retail,” says Robert Castley, Lead Solutions Consultant, Keynote Systems. “John Lewis’ mobile site achieving 100% average availability is extremely impressive and it’s also notable that all of the UK sites had download times of less than seven seconds this month. As smartphones continue to become more popular and bespoke apps and mobile sites are more commonly used for browsing and purchasing online, retailers must maintain a high level of site optimisation in order to continue to attract and retain customers.
“To prepare for the Christmas shopping season, retailers also need to load test their mobile Websites to make sure that they can cope with the increased demands of high volumes of traffic and transactions,” he warns. “Leaving this to the last minute can result in disgruntled customers in the run up to the festive season, so it’s fantastic to see that UK retailers are certainly moving in the right direction when it comes to mobile site performance.”
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