Not a Luxury Problem, But Existential

With overloaded networks and frustrated users, it becomes vital for online shops to ensure fast and stable page loads.

Due to the corona crisis, e-commerce is facing massive challenges. People are staying at home. The increasing traffic threatens to overwhelm the networks — Netflix and others are already throttling, while the loading times of many online shops are increasing. At the same time, anxiety and tension are rising. Therefore, not only the overall consumption drops. According to a study by Google, customers perceive all page loads as being dramatically slower.

In the current situation there are two types of online shops. The first type are shops fighting for survival because customers stay away or buy significantly less. The others are downright overwhelmed by customers, so that loading times are brought to their knees by overloaded backends and networks. For the former, fast loading times are crucial in order to convert customers despite their anxiety through a frictionless user experience. For the latter, stable loading times are a basic prerequisite, for customers to be able to buy in the first place and not move away to faster competitors.

Will the network infrastructure and shop systems handle the load?

In addition to the concerns of many online shops, there is currently the nagging question whether the network operators will be able to cope with the increasing traffic. After all, Netflix, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and Amazon are already reducing the quality of their media to reduce the growing load. At the same time, Internet usage in large parts of the world has increased by more than 50% since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

As an example, we analyzed data from the largest German online shops to answer whether load times have increased since the outbreak of the COVID-19 crisis. As the above chart shows, the answer is clearly “yes”. Comparing January to March, 85% of the shops have seen a steep performance decline, in some cases to a dramatic extent. It is also striking that the effect is not only affecting the smaller or larger shops, but is spread across the entire e-commerce industry. The data comes from Google’s so-called “Chrome User Experience Report” and contains usage data from a large number of real users. Another analysis by Fastly found country-specific traffic changes between +32% and +109% associated with dropping download speeds up to 35%.

Even though the major network operators are assuring that sufficient capacity and bandwidth are available, it is clear that 85% of all shops need to take action to compensate for the slump in loading times in March. According to current figures from the German E-Commerce Association (BEVH), March sales in online retail have slumped by almost 20%. With a few exceptions (e.g. food, drugstore articles and medicine), all sectors are affected — just as with the drop in loading times.

How customer behavior is linked to loading times during the crisis

Many people know it from their own experience in home office: If “the Internet” does not work in the usual quality, patience can snap quickly. And that it is what millions of customers are facing at the moment. But page speed is by no means just a problem for those who have to share their 10 Mbit/s home network connection with partners and children. Often without realizing it themselves, customers react to the smallest differences in performance with significantly different behavior — and always to the disadvantage of the shop operator.

Under stress, 44% of users perceive websites as slower.

Performance study by Google and Awwwards

The following chart provides a summary of the most important studies and findings that online retailers should know in the current situation:

The studies are only a small selection, but one thing is obvious: Slow loading sites lose users, while fast sites increase sales. How strong this correlation is, seems astonishing. If for example the top 10 shops in Germany were to load one second faster, this would correspond to 187 million Euros of additional revenue every month (according to EHI sales figures for 2019 and the Amazon statistics mentioned above). Interestingly, the additional revenue does not have to be “bought” through marketing channels, but is generated solely by customers who are more willing to buy. In addition, the better performance has a long-term effect on organic search engine traffic, as Google has started incorporating the end-user’s performance into the SEO rank in the past 2 years.

What retailers and manufacturers have to do for performance now

Performance is of course only one of many factors for a good conversion rate. But unlike the consumer climate, speed is a factor that every shop operator has completely in his own hands. In general, there are three areas that need to be optimized:

1. Frontend: The rendering of a website runs in a series of steps, some of which can be executed in parallel and some of which build on each other. The Critical Rendering Path describes the part of this process that has to run sequentially, i.e. step by step. For optimal loading times, this critical path should be kept as short as possible (few JavaScript and CSS resources) and executed in an optimal order (avoid blocking).
2. Network: It is crucial for network performance that as few different domains as possible are integrated and that the correct protocols are used. This includes both basics (e.g. HTTP/2 instead of HTTP/1.1) and very complex details (e.g. OCSP stapling in the TLS protocol). The browser cache must also be used by appropriate HTTP headers to avoid unnecessary requests.
3. Backend: The most complex area is the backend, since many different system are involved — from the shop system to the CMS to the ERP, PIM and database system. Therefore, there are hardly any generic solutions in this area.

Classic performance optimization according to the above criteria requires a lot of time and resources. However, there is an elegant shortcut that we have developed at Baqend.

Ensure fast page loads with Speed Kit

The Hamburg-based research spin-off Baqend enables market-leading loading times with just a few simple steps. The performance plugin Speed Kit was developed specifically for the acceleration of e-commerce websites. Speed Kit is based on innovative caching algorithms and is designed for websites of all sizes.

The installation of Speed Kit usually takes only a few hours. Speed Kit is integrated into the shop as a JavaScript code snippet and then runs in the user’s browser. Most shops benefit particularly from the fast delivery of HTML responses that often save a second of “dead time” and more. With these time savings in the Time to First Byte (TTFB), many shops are able to load as fast as the global top players. Images are automatically optimized and all data is stored in the browser cache and a distributed caching infrastructure for maximum performance.

As an example of how Speed Kit helps, check out this case study for the world’s largest online sports retailers Decathlon:

The Baqend team has done an amazing job with Speed Kit and not only accelerated our site by 2.5x, but also been a reliable partner during the result analysis. There is no doubt about the great ROI. They have become a strategic part in our online growth plans.

Florian Bischoff, Director E-Commerce, Decathlon Germany

Baqend provides Speed Kit as an immediate measure for online shops affected by COVID-19. Get in touch here to learn more and let us provide you with an offer and a performance assessment.