Fortunately, we like cats.

Experiment: Measuring the impact of CDN deployment on 3G performance

As we continue to evolve our mobile treatments, we also monitor their effectiveness alongside other optimization solutions. Today I want to call out some interesting results we noted when, as a fun little in-house exercise, we took the O’Reilly website, de-optimized it, and then iterated through a handful of core performance best practices using our FEO service. The goal was to demonstrate the acceleration benefit (in terms of bytes in, start render time, document complete time, connections, and resources) of each practice for a typical 3G mobile user.

While we saw predictable results for step 1 — enabling keep-alives and compression — we were somewhat surprised by what we saw when we added a content delivery network.

Step 1: Apply fundamental best practices

First we added keep-alive connections:

• What it does: Lessens the impact of TCP connection setup
• Benefit: Addresses the problem of having too many TCP connections

Then we added HTTP compression:

• What it does: Compresses text-based content (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, etc.)
• Benefit: Easy way to reduce bytes/payload

We got the results we expected: faster start render, and about a 25% reduction in doc complete time. This is fantastic, even more so because both these treatments are really easy to do — usually it’s just a matter of a single configuration option on your server, proxy, or load balancer. However, these two treatments aren’t enough to give you the acceleration you need.

Step 2: Use a content delivery network (CDN)

Here’s the elevator-ride explanation of how a CDN works (for an excellent detailed explainer, go here): Static page assets (images, CSS, etc.) are served from locations near the requesting client (mobile or otherwise). The shorter distance between client and content means smaller time to first byte (TTFB) and, ostensibly, faster start render. This means users start to see content in their browser faster.

In our experiment, we expected that adding a CDN would result in faster average time to first byte, start render, and doc complete time. Here’s what we saw:

Before and after: Document complete (aka load time)

Before and after: Time to first byte (TTFB)

What we helped

Findings

With a CDN, the page got faster, but not by much. For the unoptimized page, we forced requests to travel from west coast to east coast. After, we let the CDN naturally select the closest edge. As a result, we saw that:

• Doc complete time decreased by 10%, compared to a 20% improvement we noted in a similar experiment in desktop optimization.
• We shaved less than a second off start render time, taking it from 7.059 seconds down to 6.245 seconds.
• True, we cut time to first byte by 39%, but from an end-user perspective, TTFB doesn’t really mean anything because the user still isn’t seeing anything in the browser.

Five questions about CDNs and mobile acceleration

I’m not making any nutty claims like “CDNs aren’t effective for mobile devices.” (Heresy!) But these results do raise a few questions:

1. Is edge selection for mobile devices not as effective as for desktop?
2. Some, if not all, CDNs probably deploy servers near cell network exit points. But what if most of the latency occurs inside the cell network? (I’ll admit I’m not an expert on what happens inside a 3G network. I’m ready to be enlightened.)
3. Does the meaning of “closeness” change for mobile?
4. Acknowledging the existence of mobile-specific CDNs, how much more effective are they? How do they compare when it comes to 3G versus WiFi? I’ve been trying to dig up case studies, with no luck.
5. High CDN costs may be justifiable when you see significant benefit for your desktop traffic, but do they deliver sufficient benefit/ROI for mobile users?

Takeaway

LTE is grabbing a lot of attention, but it’s a mistake to sweep 3G under the rug. There are 256 million 3G subscribers in the US, representing 81% penetration, so 3G performance is still a big deal. We need more research. If you have findings to share, please do.

Related posts:

• Marrying CDNs with front-end optimization for maximum acceleration [SLIDES]
• Case study: How to use network quality as a proxy for measuring mobile performance
• Latency reality check: Early findings show that desktop latency ranges from 65-145ms

In-store waiting vs. online waiting

As I wrote in a recent post on the Radware blog, 70% of online shopping carts are abandoned before checkout. A recent survey of US shoppers found that slow load times was the number one cause for half of those abandoned carts. Unfortunately, there aren’t comparable numbers for in-store shopping cart abandonment (the only measurement tool a bricks-and-mortar store has is a security camera that counts foot traffic and compares it with number of purchases), but it’s safe to hazard a guess that it’s not as high as 70%.

When it comes to standing in checkout lines, there are a few other points of dissimilarity between in-store shoppers and online shoppers:

However, both types of shopper do have one thing in common:

In short, the online checkout process is characterized by uncertainty.

This is caused by relative lack of feedback about your transaction status, coupled with a lack of choice in terms of how you can respond to long wait times. In a physical store, you know the line is going to move eventually, and that if you get desperate you can hop on another line. If a page hangs during an online transaction, it introduces uncertainty that you’ll ever be able to complete your purchase. (In one survey, 44% of respondents said that page slowdowns during checkout made them anxious about the success of the transaction.) And line jockeying isn’t an option on the internet.

Common-sense things we know about waiting…

• As waiting time increases, satisfaction decreases.
• As perceived or recalled wait duration increases, the wait becomes less acceptable.

Obvious-sounding stuff, right? These findings more or less make sense because they appeal to what we believe to be our common sense.

However, common sense is pretty thin on the ground…

…as you see when you look at the larger body of wait time research. We’re riddled with irrational feelings about waiting:

• We make inconsistent choices. For example, we abandon slow transactions and go to competitor websites, despite the fact that starting the transaction from scratch somewhere else will take much longer than just waiting a few extra seconds. We prefer longer wait times if we get to be active rather than passive while we wait.
• We remember wait times as being 35% longer than they actually were, and base our satisfaction on this remembered experience rather than reality.

• We report that a longer unpleasant experience is better than a shorter equally unpleasant experience, if the longer experience ended more abruptly.
• As one study of call centres found, we perceive a long wait as being worth it if we ultimately receive more call support time, even if this increased time doesn’t deliver significantly more information.
• We use other people’s satisfaction as a benchmark. We base our satisfaction on how our situation stacks up to the satisfaction of others.

And best of all:

• Even if we go into a transaction knowing our tendency to be prey to the illusions described above, most of us will still fall prey to them.

Takeaways

If you’re visiting this blog, you obviously care about delivering a better experience to whoever your users are. You’re probably already working to make your pages faster – through applying optimization best practices, deploying a CDN, etc. That’s a crucial beginning. But there’s more.

1. See what your users see: Mentally increase your measurement numbers by 35%.

Understand that the start render time (or load time, or whatever performance metric you focus on) numbers that you see in your performance measurement data may be the real picture, but your real picture doesn’t match your users’ perceived picture. If your pages load in 5 seconds, the average user remembers it as feeling like closer to 7 seconds.

2. Ensure that every page in the transaction is fast.

A lot of site owners focus on optimizing their landing pages and product pages, but as this case study shows, slowing down pages later in a transaction can cause the abandonment rate to jump from 67% to 80%. Every page matters.

3. Better yet, simplify the transaction process down to a single page.

Implementing one-click checkout, like Amazon, is one way to to this. Another is to build your checkout as a single-page application using Ajax, so that resource requests and responses happen in the background, beyond the user’s notice.

4. Know when to use spinners and progress bars.

And know how to design them. (Also know when not to use them. A progress bar on a page that loads in less than 5 seconds will actually make that page feel slower.) There are some solid best practices here.

5. Make the perceived value match (or better, surpass) the wait.

If long wait times are necessary, ensure that you’re delivering something that has value that’s commensurate with the wait. A good example of this is travel websites. When you’re searching for the best hotel rates, most of us don’t mind waiting several seconds. We rationalize the wait because we assume that the engine is searching a massive repository of awesome travel deals in order to give us the very best results.

I’m still deep in this rabbit hole. If you have any more good research to throw down, I’d love to check it out.

Related posts:

• How does the human brain keep track of time? [VIDEO]
• This is your brain on a slow website [INFOGRAPHICS]
• Our need for web speed: It’s about neuroscience, not entitlement

Josh left some big shoes to fill. He also left some excellent unaired podcasts, which I’ll be rolling out over the next few weeks, starting with this great interview with Aaron Kulick. Like most of us, Aaron wears a lot of hats. If you live and work in Silicon Valley, then you probably know him as the founder and co-organizer of the SF Web Performance Meetup Group — not surprisingly, the biggest performance meetup in the world. Or you may know him as the organizer of the first-ever WebPerfDays that followed Velocity Santa Clara last year. Or you might know him in his former role as senior software engineer at Walmart Labs — and particularly as one of the guys behind this awesome slide deck, which went viral last year.

Like a few of our previous podcast guests, Aaron has been in the enviable position of working with massive amounts of RUM data. There are rumblings of some folks saying “RUM is so 2012″, but in many regards it’s still in its infancy — or at least its toddlerhood. The tools are there, the data is there, but turning this data into actionable insights is the next great challenge: it takes a lot of multidisciplinary know-how to make RUM data truly relevant at an operational level. As Aaron said, “It’s a bit of an uphill charge, but many of the teams [at Walmart] have started to incorporate analysis around [performance data] or at least keep it as a, ‘Hmm, we should keep this in mind.’” Baby steps, right?

I hope you enjoy the podcast. If you have feedback or suggestions for future podcast subjects, email me at tammye [[at]] radware [[dot]] com.

Listen to the podcast: Aaron Kulick

Related posts:

• 4 awesome slides showing how page speed correlates to business metrics at Walmart.com
• Lori MacVittie (F5): “Fast is an incredibly, incredibly stressful thing to try and do.” [PODCAST]
• Mike Belshe (Twist): “Time is fixed. It’s precious. We all wish we had more of it.” [PODCAST]

Between the birth of my third child and preparing the move to Radware, the past sixteen months have been exhilarating. And, like most exhilarating experiences, it’s been exhausting. I’m tapped out. It’s time to unplug and recharge. I know — those metaphors contradict each other. That’s what happens when you’re tired. I’ll be taking an extended break. For how long, I can’t say — possibly till my wife gets sick of having me around the house. Maybe a bit longer.

Radware has a sustainable vision for our technology and the chops to execute that vision. I’m looking forward to watching and cheering from the sidelines.

Kent Alstad – one of Strangeloop’s cofounders, our former CTO, author of all our patents, and the most knowledgeable person I’ve ever met when it comes to hardcore FEO – will continue to drive innovation on the product side of things at Radware. Kent is also an awesome speaker, so you can look forward to seeing more of him on the conference circuit and on this blog.

On the performance evangelism side, Tammy Everts will be taking over here on the blog, as well as with speaking engagements and everything that goes with that. Under her leadership, you’ll continue to enjoy the high quality of research, insights, and industry news that I hope you’ve come to associate with this site. Some of you already know Tammy, but if not, you should know that she’s been working closely with me behind the scenes for the past three years. This blog has been very much a collaborative effort, and I want to publicly thank Tammy for both her ideas and her much-needed editing skills. Before coming to Strangeloop, she had a long background in user experience. She brings a really cool perspective on the human side of performance, and I know she’s already planning some exciting new research in that area, as well as continuing to cover the business and technical aspects. I’ve also pestered her into reviving her semi-dormant Twitter account, so I encourage you to follow her there and force her to post.

Radware has also taken the forward-looking step of training a global team of technical experts who can preach our technology in every major market. With dozens of performance-related Meetup groups popping up around the world, I’m very excited about the prospect of connecting with as many new people as possible — something Strangeloop, as a smaller company, was always limited in doing.

People keep asking me what’s next for me, and the answer isn’t that glamorous. I’m sure I’ll return to the tech world some day. Startup fever is like malaria: it keeps coming back. But for now, my plans include enjoying more time with my beautiful wife and our three boys, taking long walks with my dog, and spending some quality time connecting with my garden. (I have some ambitious pond-building plans.)

If I tried to thank everyone who’s supported me over the past several years, I’d be here all day, so let me just say thank you to everyone, including you.

Performance has become a hot topic in the past three or four years, but it’s been around since the inception of the web, and it’s meant different things at different times. Up till six or seven years ago, the focus was on just keeping sites up under load stress, no matter whether or not this meant losing a few seconds. Fast forward to today, and things have done a complete turnabout. As most of us know, optimal performance is not only about supporting millions of users, but also ensuring that each of these users is blazing fast. As Lori points out, “it’s an incredibly, incredibly stressful thing to try and do, because you’ve got even more moving parts now than you did then.”

Lori and I covered a lot of ground in our chat, from the early acceleration pioneers who helped birth modern-day FEO, to ADCs and SDNs and a bunch of other cool acronyms. Lori also made a heroic attempt to convince me that the cloud is interesting. You’ll have to listen to the podcast to see if she succeeded.

(Note: I want to apologize in advance for the audio quality in this podcast. We’re working on making it better.)

Listen to the podcast: Lori MacVittie

Related posts:

• Mike Belshe (Twist): “Time is fixed. It’s precious. We all wish we had more of it.” [PODCAST]
• Tim Morrow (Betfair): Why third-party content keeps him up at night [PODCAST]
• Joshua Marantz (Google): Why erring on the conservative side is a good thing [PODCAST]

Last week, Hooman spoke at Cloud Connect in Santa Clara, and I asked him if I could post his slide deck here. It’s an excellent overview of the business value of performance, mobile performance issues, measurement and tools, front-end problems and front-end optimization (FEO), the role of CDNs in performance, and some great case studies and examples.

I also wanted to call out a couple of bits of eye candy, because I know there are always a few of you out there on the prowl for new biz value graphics to use in your own presentations. It’s also really interesting to see familiar data presented in a fresh way, which can trigger new insights.

First is the oft-quoted Google research about the impact of load time slowdowns on search. You may have heard these stats before, but this simple graph really drives those numbers home.

A reduction of 0.6% may not sound like much, but when you consider that this is a result of a slowdown of less than half a second, and if you also consider the net impact across all of Google’s traffic, it’s pretty staggering.

I also really like this graphic interpretation of Bing’s well-known research, in which they segmented their traffic and served slower pages — in some cases up to 2 seconds slower — to different segments. It’s easy to see at a glance the impact on queries, clicks, revenue, and user satisfaction.

Again, you can see how little it takes to hurt metrics. Revenue dropped by more than 1% with just a 500-millisecond delay, and by more than 4% with a 2-second delay. It’s also interesting to note that while the 200-millisecond delay may not have directly affected revenue, it did have a measurable impact on user satisfaction, which is a good reminder of just how sensitive users are to even the smallest changes in load time.

Related posts:

• 37 lessons I’ve learned on the performance front lines [SLIDES]
• First Annual State of the Union for Mobile Ecommerce Performance [SLIDES]
• O’Reilly webcast: Mobile web performance trends and predictions [SLIDES]

With a good SLA, everyone wins.

Clients are protected from poor service, while also gaining a clear understanding of what to realistically expect from their supplier.

Suppliers are protected from unrealistic client demands, while also benefiting from having a consistent yardstick for meeting expectations, as well as an incentive for exceeding expectations.

Sounds great, right? So why haven’t more companies adopted this practice? A bunch of reasons, all of which are pretty understandable, such as: fear of accountability, inadequate tools for reliably measuring performance, lack of management buy-in, negative past experiences with poor/unrealistic SLAs. But if we truly care about delivering a top-tier online experience, we need to get over these obstacles.

There are three key areas that would benefit from having a solid service level agreement in place:

1. Customer-facing performance SLA

I’m not the first person to champion this idea. People like Jonathein Klein and Stephen Thair have been making eloquent calls for this kind of public performance contract over the last couple of years. To be frank, I don’t think most customers would ever read it (though if asked, the average person would probably tell you they think it’s a good idea because speed matters to them).

But I think the real value of this kind of performance SLA is internal: making a public declaration is a potentially great motivator for making your team accountable for delivering on your promise.

Back in 2011, Jonathan shared an example of what I still think is the best performance SLA I’ve come across:

“The homepage of our site will load in under 3 seconds measured at the 80th percentile via synthetic tests running in New York, LA, Seattle, and Miami every 30 minutes. We will measure this SLA at 8:00AM every morning and base it off the last 24 hours of data.”

This is a perfect yardstick — it’s short, snappy, and quantifiable. Whether you’re a developer or an executive, this is something you can get behind. If you’re looking for a template for your own SLA, this is a great place to start.

2. Third-party provider SLA

Third-party scripts are one of the most common points of failure for sites. At best, unoptimized scripts can slow down your load time, sometimes by many precious seconds. At worst, third-party outages can stall page load completely.

The average top ecommerce site contains 7 third-party scripts, with some sites containing up to 25 scripts. Yet despite this proliferation, most third-party providers don’t offer real-time monitoring of their scripts, nor do they offer meaningful service level agreements (SLAs). In my experience, the only way most people discover third-party SPOFs is by accident, when they visit their own sites.

Sure, you can defer many of your scripts so that they load last, but this isn’t always an option — for instance, when it comes to your third-party ads.

I dream of a world where all third-party providers offer clear performance service level agreements to site owners. In my ideal world, these SLAs would:

• Express their annual uptime guarantee as a percentage (ideally, as close to 100% as possible).
• Describe the process for reimbursing site owners (if site owners are paying for the service provided by the script) if uptime drops below the SLA guarantee.

Tag management companies have been jumping into the fray, with several vendors stating a clear focus on performance. This is a great start. My hope is that, as site owners become more educated about the importance of page speed, they’re going to start demanding properly optimized scripts, as well as better monitoring, reporting, and accountability.

For more detailed tips on how to create a meaningful third-party SLA, check out this great post over at Catchpoint.

3. Cloud provider SLA

The cloud offers huge benefits, but it also introduces a huge new area of vulnerability. It’s understandable that we’re tempted to demand control over the performance of our cloud-based applications, because this (or at least the illusion of it) is what we had before the cloud.

This demand is ultimately unrealistic. However, it is realistic to expect that, in exchange for losing some of the infrastructural control you used to have before you deployed your apps to the cloud, you should be able to ask your provider for more visibility and assurances in how their infrastructure will perform for you.

Here’s what it’s fair to ask from your cloud provider:

• Analytics tools – You should continue to use the performance monitoring tools you already use to monitor your app performance with (WebPagetest, Keynote, Gomez, etc.), but you also need a new visibility toolset (that your cloud provider should help you with) so you can do root cause analysis over parts of the infrastructure that you don’t have control over or visibility into.
• Detailed performance clauses in your service level agreements – Some cloud SLAs contain a performance clause that addresses availability, but speed is every bit as important as — and possibly more important than — uptime. This clause needs to spell out how your concerns about site speed will be addressed, should they occur.

I’m very curious to learn about other people’s successes and failures with performance SLAs. Have you come across an SLA that rocked your world? Is there another type of performance-related SLA I haven’t considered? Feel free to share in the comments, or email me directly at joshua [[at]] webperformancetoday [[dot]] com.

Related posts:

• Tim Morrow (Betfair): Why third-party content keeps him up at night [PODCAST]
• Geoffrey Smalling (Wine.com): Why performance measurement is an art form, how mobile is a game changer, and where the cloud fits in [PODCAST]
• How vulnerable is your site to third-party failure?

In December 2011, the median load time for a site in the Alexa Retail 2000 was 5.94 seconds. Just twelve months later, the median was 7.25 seconds. At this rate of growth, this number could hit almost 9 seconds by the end of this year.

This was the key finding of our brand-new quarterly report (yes, a new report, not to be confused with last week’s report about web performance in the EU) on ecommerce web performance. If you’re new to these reports, since 2010 we’ve been measuring the load time, page composition, and best practice implementation of the same set of 2,000 leading online retailers, as ranked by Alexa. The goal is to learn how pages are changing over time and what impact, if any, these changes have on per-page performance. The results have been eye-opening.

I have to confess that I frequently feel like that tiresome guy at the party who keeps saying the same things over and over again. Pages are getting slower… pages are getting bigger… the gap between load times and user expectations is getting wider almost by the week. If you’re reading this out there and saying to yourself, “I can’t believe that Bixby guy is going on about this AGAIN,” then forward the next part of this post to five people you think could really benefit from it. If enough people internalize this message, maybe I’ll shut up.*

Three performance myths I would give anything to permanently bust:

Myth #1. Pages are, de facto, getting faster.

What with our better systems, networks, and browsers, pages must be getting faster, right? Everyone believes this instinctively, because most of us seem to be hardwired to believe that technology solves problems rather than creating new ones. But as I said at the top of this post, the quickly emerging fact is that pages seem to not just be getting slower, they’re getting slower at an alarming rate. (Optional: You may choose to take this finding as proof that we shouldn’t always trust our instincts. )

Myth #2. Users are more or less satisfied with the status quo.

“People are used to pages that take 5-8 seconds to load. They don’t mind that much.” I still hear this on a regular basis. Site owners rationalize that, because they’re not hearing a lot of complaints, their visitors are happy… or at least happy enough. But as numerous case studies have shown, people talk with their wallets. Faster sites earn more. And user surveys over the years are telling us that people’s expectations for a speedy online experience are continually growing:

Myth #3. Browser development is more than capable of mitigating the factors, such as page size and complexity, that are causing pages to slow down.

This belief is widely held, even among technical folks. Again, looking to our findings, we saw that for all three browsers, median load times slowed down by anywhere from 3% to 12% in just six months. This downward trend isn’t a browser development issue. Instead, it’s an indicator that despite browser vendors’ huge commitment to speed, development can’t keep pace with the demands of bigger and increasingly complex web pages.

Takeaway: Pass it on.

I am extremely happy that Radware is committed to continuing the tradition of releasing these quarterly  “state of the union” reports. As time passes, we’re gaining some invaluable insights. Based on these latest results, I’m very curious to see what our Summer 2013 report will hold.

I urge you to download this report (and the infographics, too). And I was only slightly kidding when I suggested that you forward this post to people who need to have a few performance myths dispelled. Our community does a lot of preaching to the choir. What seems basic to us is not necessarily basic to the rest of the world. We need to get out there and make sure these simple messages are being heard.

*Maybe.

Related posts:

• New findings: Typical leading European commerce site takes 7.04 seconds to load
• New findings: Ecommerce sites are 9% slower than in 2011
• New report: What we’ve learned from two years of watching the top 2,000 e-commerce websites

But really, I got into this business for the same reason that many people — including you, perhaps — did: because I consider time the most valuable thing we have.

It sounds trite, but so do a lot of true things. As my most recent podcast guest, Mike Belshe, says, “Time is fixed. It’s precious. We all wish we had more of it.”

This attitude is what prompted Mike to create Google’s groundbreaking SPDY protocol, which has the potential to fulfil Google’s stated mandate: make the web universally faster.

And even though Mike left Google a year and a half ago, this attitude remains a driver behind his latest experiment, Twist — an online service that could radically reduce the amount of time you waste waiting for your chronically late friends to show up (or a myriad of other waiting-game scenarios). I’ve tried it, and it actually is kind of miraculous how well it works.

In this podcast, Mike and I had a far-reaching discussion about time, SPDY, Twist, mobile, native apps, and HTML5 versus Java. I enjoyed it immensely. I hope you do, too.

Listen to the podcast: Mike Belshe

Related posts:

• Tim Morrow (Betfair): Why third-party content keeps him up at night [PODCAST]
• Joshua Marantz (Google): Why erring on the conservative side is a good thing [PODCAST]
• Ilya Grigorik (Google): When it comes to tackling web performance, we all still have a lot to learn [PODCAST]

As Stephen said:

“I guess it’s a bit frustrating in the UK at the moment. One of the things that I found is that we haven’t yet got that killer web performance case study in one of the big major retailers. So we are still, I think, a bit in the evangelical stage. We are still trying to get the message out there. There are still a lot of websites in the UK that don’t even have gzip turned on.”

So we set out to help fill that gap. In December of 2012, working with Radware (our soon-to-be parent company) in conjunction with our partners at Level 3 in Europe, we studied the page speed and composition of 400 top European retailers, as ranked by Internet Retailer magazine, to see how these sites would load for visitors using Chrome 23 (the most popular browser in the EU at the time of testing) via the test server in Amsterdam. (We chose the Amsterdam location because it allowed us to test across all major browsers.) The report was released today.

While the results may not be shocking if you’ve been paying close attention to this space, they may come as an eye-opener to online retailers in the EU. Our chief finding was this:

The median page took more than 7 seconds to load.

Depending on whom you ask, the average internet user expects web pages to load in less than 3 seconds, 2 seconds, or even 400 milliseconds. The last time the average person reported being cool with 7-second load times was around 2001.

The survey also found that:

• 1 out of 4 pages took more than 10 seconds to load.
• 1 out of 3 pages contained more than 100 resources.
• 79% of sites don’t use a recognized CDN. (A “recognized CDN” refers to any CDN listed in the extensive directory of CDNs maintained by WebPagetest.)
• Speaking to Stephen’s point about gzip at the top of this post, 1 out of 5 sites failed to implement text compression, a relatively simple technique that delivers easy, significant performance gains.

Why you should care about these findings

I may be pointing out the obvious, but it may need to be pointed out: these expectations are universal. Internet users in the EU do not have lower performance expectations than users in North America. These findings should be a wake-up call for European site owners. (Not that North American site owners should be resting easy. Last fall, we found that the median leading US commerce home page took almost 7 seconds to load.)

Download the report: State of the Union: European Ecommerce Page Speed and Web Performance

Related posts:

• New findings: Ecommerce sites are 9% slower than in 2011
• New report: What we’ve learned from two years of watching the top 2,000 e-commerce websites
• Introducing the Web Performance Today podcast