First Annual State of the Union for Mobile Ecommerce Performance

Get ready for an industry first. At Velocity Europe, Strangeloop president Joshua Bixby will be unveiling the findings from the first comprehensive study ever conducted of mobile performance over 3G networks.

There’s a head-in-the-sand tendency to assume that just because our mobile devices, browsers, and networks are more powerful than ever, end-user performance must also be getting better. But given the facts that (1) the average web page is now 1 MB, (2) one out of three mobile users will view the full site over the m.site when given the choice, and (3) almost half the world’s population is covered by a 3G network, it’s crucial to understand how regular web pages load for 3G users.

This is why, in the spring and summer of 2012, Strangeloop conducted an industry first: a mobile performance survey of top ecommerce sites, resulting in a report to be revealed for the first time to Velocity attendees.

The First Annual State of the Union for Mobile Ecommerce Performance documents how Strangeloop tested the top Alexa-ranked retail sites on a variety of mobile browsers and devices – from iOS to Android, Opera to Windows 7, smartphones to tablets – to get the answers to questions like these:

• How long does the average and median site take to load in each mobile browser? How long to start render? What’s the gap between these two timings?
• Which sites were fastest, and which were slowest?
• Do some mobile OS/browsers/devices offer a consistently faster user experience than others? If so, why?
• Is there a correlation between a site’s mobile performance and its adherence to best practices?
• Is there a correlation between page composition – in terms of size and number of resources – and mobile performance? If so (or not), then why (or why not)?
• How do all of these findings compare to similar research conducted for desktop performance, published in Strangeloop’s annual Page Speed and Website Performance State of the Union reports?

In this session, Joshua will present these findings, among others. And while these findings are interesting in and of themselves, equally interesting was the process for undertaking these tests. As Strangeloop discovered, there’s no simple way to reliably measure mobile performance across a large number of pages. Joshua will share the research methodology for those who want to undertake similar research on their own, as well as the lessons learned along the way.

Attendees will walk away with a clear snapshot of mobile ecommerce performance. Armed with these findings, they can create a compelling argument to focus on mobile optimization within their own organizations.