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In The M-Commerce Page Load World: Target, Sears Slow; Amazon, QVC Fast

Written by Evan Schuman
December 1st, 2009
As the percentage of shopping done through the small lens of a mobile phone soars, almost to the point of being meaningful, retailers should start to calculate page load time differently. For the first half of November—when Web performance tracking company Gomez took a look—Target, Buy.com, Sears and 1-800-Flowers had the most catch-up to do, while Amazon, QVC, Newegg and Overstock fared nicely.

The secret to the most successful mobile sites is pure simplicity, the lesson that Google's homepage tried teaching the industry. For example, I often find that Amazon's mobile app beats—with many seconds to spare—my much higher powered desktop riding over the same broadband connection looking at Amazon's Web site, so the idea that it would come out on top is not surprising. Making this accomplishment even more impressive, according to Gomez, is that—in general—chains' mobile site page load averages are more than "50 percent slower than the average response times" of those same chains' traditional Web sites.

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One Comment | Read In The M-Commerce Page Load World: Target, Sears Slow; Amazon, QVC Fast

  1. Jack Taylor Says:
    December 4th, 2009 at 11:29 am

    The Target vs. Amazon results are really interesting, seeing as how Amazon runs Target’s site. Looks like someone missed some clauses in the contract on performance…

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