14 DAY TRIAL // Zeus Technology, an analytics company claiming to offer the only pure software-based application traffic management (Application Delivery Controller), has carried out a study to find that how fast web pages load on Apple’s iPad. Their conclusion? Not that fast.
Research conducted by the company shows that “one third of the world’s most visited sites take more than a second to load on an iPad,” Zeus Technology said in a report that hit the wires minutes ago.
“With the average page load time taking 0.86 seconds, the research comes off the back of findings from Amazon that every 100ms of latency in page delivery time resulted in a 1% drop in sales,” reads the report.
According to Zeus, the quickest websites included the home pages of Google, Mozilla and BBC, which averaged speeds of 0.046, 0.015 and 0.078 seconds respectively on the iPad, despite being some of the most traffic heavy sites worldwide.
As a result of this finding, “Zeus is encouraging other slower performing sites that receive large volumes of traffic, to ensure they are putting the correct traffic management measures in place for iPad sites as they would for desktop designed online areas.”
Other study findings included
- the majority of the top visited sites globally are not offering a fully optimized web experience on the iPad
- 82 percent of said web sites did not have any video on the supposedly iPad-optimized version of the site
- one third (33 per cent) featured a video that would not work on the device due to compatibility issues (most likely Flash)
Moreover, 27 percent of the top 100 sites do not offer personalization options on their iPad sites, Zeus found.
Such options include members areas or log-in sections.
All websites should yield large volumes of traffic in order “to know who is visiting their site in order to prioritize regular visitors more effectively and ensure their loyalty is not compromised by frustrations about the performance of an iPad site,” Zeus Technology believes.
“With the iPad or other tablet device – highly sought after Christmas gifts this year – a new wave of users will be accessing the web through these devices in the next few months,” commented Kosten Metreweli, Chief Marketing Officer, Zeus Technology.
“However, consumers are unlikely to be forgiving if websites fail to perform, no matter what device they are accessing it from. If a visitor accesses a site that doesn’t offer the level of service they expect, they will most likely go to a competitor’s digital channels instead to find what they are looking for,” added Metreweli.
“Equally, if they become frustrated with a brand, the volume of social media sites available nowadays means that they can easily share their negative sentiments with other users. Although not all performance issues can be planned for, businesses can take simple steps to ensure services do not fail when their consumer base needs them most,” Metreweli concluded.