The end of shopping for 2016 is coming to a close and boy has this year been a big one. According to Fortune.com “U.S. online sales gained momentum on Cyber Monday and are set to surpass initial expectations by hitting a record $3.39 billion as consumers snapped up deals on the busiest day of the year for Internet shopping.” Clearly online sales are growing as consumers find new ways to purchase products via mobile devices and social channels.
With all of this excitement and preparation there are winners and there are those that just don’t rise to the top when Cyber Monday occurs. Ensuring your site is ready and healthy during the key shopping days requires that performance and access are available for everyone that wants to buy the perfect gift for the year. The health of a website is crucial to meeting business objectives no matter the time of year.
At Apica we wanted to test how online retails stack up against each other during these major events. This is where the “Cyber Monday Web Performance Index” was born. The goal of the index is to highlight how the market is doing and who really delivered the best online shopping experience in 2017 based on a weighted average of web performance.
The index includes metrics on how long a webpage took to load (document object model complete or DOM score), the total site rendering time and the stability and consistency of the site under heavy and light loads. Ultimately, this provided an overall web performance index that indicates how healthy the eCommerce industry is performing as a whole.
Some key findings that stood out to us include:
- Top Ten eCommerce Websites are Healthy, But Rest Are Lagging Behind Expectations
- Scaling and Stability is a Major Issue Across the Industry
- Deception Through Progressive Page Loading is Key to Speed
Want to see who the big winners were in 2016, you and view the full Cyber Monday Web Performance Index here: Cyber Monday Index 2016
