Are Online Retailers Prepared for a Christmas surge?
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www.eurofins-digitaltesting.com [email protected] Research: Are Online Retailers Prepared for a Christmas surge? Introduction It’s been encouraging to hear that many UK online retailers have just completed their most successful quarter – and that can be put down to the coronavirus pandemic and the reticence of many people to venture out. Econsultancy reported that 77% of British consumers now do at least part of their online shopping online. This figure is up from 61% in 2019. Against this backdrop, and in the run up to the traditionally busiest period for retailers, Edge Testing Solutions (Edge) set out to test the websites of 258 leading UK online retailers. A renowned testing specialist, Edge used industry-standard tools to see how retailers’ websites are holding up to increased traffic by determining factors which lead to better customer experience and conversions, including: load time, navigation tools, image quality and broken links. Sharon Hamilton, MD of Edge Testing commented on the research: “The findings of the study make for fascinating reading. In these challenging times e-commerce is a vital business model not just for success but also currently, for survival. Key surprises were around performance. A retailer cannot afford to have a slow or unresponsive website – especially as customers are demanding immediate response times and the majority are happy to move on to a competitors’ website if kept waiting.” Edge Testing Solutions Established in 2007, the company has grown fast to become the UK’s largest independent software testing company. Working across a number of industry sectors, the company has a strong pedigree within the retail sector, where clients have benefited from performance, functional, usability, automated and managed testing services to ensure correct functioning of backend IT systems/ infrastructure and e-commerce websites. From a testing and retail perspective, Edge is in an excellent place to undertake this study. 1 https://econsultancy.com/stats-roundup-coronavirus-impact-on- marketing-ecommerce-advertising/ 2 2019 TOP500 UK Internet Retailing ranking
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Transcript of Are Online Retailers Prepared for a Christmas surge?
Research: Are Online Retailers Prepared for a Christmas surge?
Introduction
It’s been encouraging to hear that many UK online retailers have just completed their most successful quarter – and that can be put down to the coronavirus pandemic and the reticence of many people to venture out. Econsultancy reported that 77% of British consumers now do at least part of their online shopping online. This figure is up from 61% in 2019. Against this backdrop, and in the run up to the traditionally busiest period for retailers, Edge Testing Solutions (Edge) set out to test the websites of 258 leading UK online retailers. A renowned testing specialist, Edge used industry-standard tools to see how retailers’ websites are holding up to increased traffic by determining factors which lead to better customer experience and conversions, including: load time, navigation tools, image quality and broken links. Sharon Hamilton, MD of Edge Testing commented on the research: “The findings of the study make for fascinating reading. In these challenging times e-commerce is a vital business model not just for success but also currently, for survival. Key surprises were around performance.
A retailer cannot afford to have a slow or unresponsive website – especially as customers are demanding immediate response times and the majority are happy to move on to a competitors’ website if kept waiting.”
Edge Testing Solutions Established in 2007, the company has grown fast to become the UK’s largest independent software testing company. Working across a number of industry sectors, the company has a strong pedigree within the retail sector, where clients have benefited from performance, functional, usability, automated and managed testing services to ensure correct functioning of backend IT systems/infrastructure and e-commerce websites. From a testing and retail perspective, Edge is in an excellent place to undertake this study.
1 https://econsultancy.com/stats-roundup-coronavirus-impact-on-marketing-ecommerce-advertising/
2 2019 TOP500 UK Internet Retailing ranking
FocusDuring the research, Edge focused on the following benchmarks:
Speed How quickly does the website respond
when you click on it? Which are within acceptable and measurable baselines and which performed poorly? Poor performance equates to lost customers and lost revenue. With Black Friday and Christmas approaching all retail websites have a strong need for speed.
Ease of navigation
Which retailers had put in the effort to produce a seamless and stress free shopping experience and which had turned their websites into an obstacle course.
Image quality
Poor imaging impacts the brand in question’s credibility, the length of time a customer stays on the website, conversion rates for sales, and the level of repeat visits. Websites that use large, poorly optimised images also typically take longer to load.
Functional vs Non-Functional links
A surprising number of websites do not perform ongoing housekeeping with ‘dead links’ to obsolete pages, other brand websites and external websites. This can lead to customer frustration as they are guided down time-wasting blind alleys. So we measured the quantity of working and non-working links for each website tested.
Key findingsDaily repeated tests were conducted on the websites from 11-18 August 2020. Below we present the findings for the key criteria we discussed above. Speed Do the websites meet the ‘need for speed’? In our tests 16% (42) of landing pages took on average ten seconds to fully load with three sites taking longer than 20 seconds. Longer opening times should be of concern as they are likely to cause visitors to move on to another site. The results when using some common speed tests were as follows:- Yahoo! Speed Test: 89% of sites scored
lower than a ‘C’ grade- Google Speed Test: 85% scored ‘C’ or lower,
with 51 of the tested sites scoring a poor ‘F’- YSlow Speed Test: 66%- PageSpeed Test: 62% The average first page load speed was seven seconds. Navigation Encouragingly, using the System Usability Scale, we found the majority (98%) of the sites’ navigation features to be satisfactory, achieving from A to C grades. Only four retailers did badly, all scoring 67.5, a concerning the usability scale score gradings gives them a D grade (poor).
Image quality Only 9% of tested websites displayed images to an ‘A’ grade standard, according to the Website Speed Test tool. Others featured images that were of lower quality. In particular: - 185 sites had average image weights under
0.5 MB- Five websites including two of the major
supermarkets had image weight scores of four MB and above.
Functioning links On average, across all websites tested, 3% of links were not functioning. However on 7% of sites, more than 10% of links were found to be non-functioning.
SecurityOf the 258 websites tested only five totally blocked all the measurement tools employed by Edge with an additional two blocking all but one of our toolsets.
Analysis of the Findings Considering how important a retailer’s website is to its business success, there were some surprising scores for some of the UK’s most popular and widely used brands. When one considers that a typical customer wants a seamless, straightforward yet enjoyable shopping experience, some retailers appear to be almost going out of their way to compromise the customers’ buying experience.
Loading speedWas a key area requiring improvement with 16% of the UK’s leading online retailers taking an average 10 seconds to fully load. Even with multiple visits the average loading time was seven seconds. What happens when peak retail traffic kicks in for the Black Friday and Christmas online shopping periods? At what point will a potential customer’s patience break and a competitor’s website opened instead?
NavigationDoes not appear to be a problem with most websites allowing the customers to move freely through the various browse and sales paths. The statement is true as 98% of the websites tested, received a grading of A-C. From our testing, we found that fashion/footwear retailers had the highest website usability scores, with 75% making the top 20 scores.
Image qualityProvided interesting feedback. Low image weight is good because large images slow down web pages creating less than optimal user experience. Those with low image weight have optimised their images either a plugin or script, which in turn speeds up the load time of the page. The top 20 retailers with the lowest image scoring all use high quality and multiple images to sell their goods and services. However, so did the bottom 20 which included two supermarkets, two high street chemists, a book retailer and several popular high street clothing stores.
Weighty images hit load times hard and when you multiply this by many thousands of users that’s a lot of people sat in limbo waiting to shop.
Additional CommentsEnsuring a website remains relevant and operating efficiently is achieved through good website management and housekeeping. This means ensuring all links function correctly and that obsolete links are removed promptly. Only six websites scored a perfect 100% including Ikea and Pets at Home with another 155 scoring 99%. At the other end of the scale one of the three worst offenders was a major supermarket with a score of 65.3%. One of the primary global online retailers operating in the UK also only managed to score 86.1%.
From a security aspect we were able to deploy all our tools against most websites – the tools deployed were not intrusive or malicious however our activities did reflect the excellent cyber resistance of a small number of retailers’ websites tested. The remaining 95% of websites allowed our tools to analyse their websites and this may be a potential cause for concern.
Conclusion
Sharon Hamilton, MD of Edge Testing concludes: “During a time where consumers are shifting to online shopping more than ever before, Edge’s research reveals that retailers still have room for improvement, with slow speed, poor image quality and broken links threatening user experience. Many of the poorer performers were well known brands who cannot afford to let a poor performing website impact forthcoming sales.”
Edge’s RecommendationsConsidering the findings, Edge recommends that retailers undertake a:
Load and performance review of their e-commerce capabilityWhich would include analysing:- Current website performance capability
(to provide a benchmark)
- Measuring scalability – most retailers should have the necessary mechanisms in place to auto-scale their websites however auto-scale effectiveness also depends on the overall architecture of the web supporting systems
- Web site load balancers plus all other business logic sitting behind the servers
- Ascertaining ability to manage forecasted traffic spikes (incorporating forecasted traffic for seasonal retail campaigns plus taking into consideration the increased traffic COVID-19 has driven to e-commerce)
- Identifying supporting server capability/capacity
- Speed and agility – the ability to change the web site contents with the latest value propositions and services without impacting performance
- Identifying what is slowing down the website’s performance (e.g. weighty images, ineffective caching approach, poor coding techniques, lack of compression techniques)
- Apply the necessary changes and refinements to optimise their websites performance capability.
Separate review and potentially performance test of order fulfilmentMany retailers may have highly effective and well maintained websites however the weak link may be the internal or external order fulfilment mechanism. Edge works with several order fulfilment companies who now find themselves with a drastically increased level of demand through the impact of COVID-19 on e-commerce. One company stated that ‘COVID-19 has upped the ante so every week is now like Christmas of old so what will Christmas 2020 be like?’ With companies such as Yodel announcing 3,000 new jobs ready to cater for the Christmas 2020 buying surge the supporting order fulfilment systems must also be able to manage previously unseen levels of orders.
Housekeeping initiative to minimise the number of broken linksThis would be a straightforward exercise to undertake and there are various tools on the market which can speed up the review process. A well maintained website performs faster and provides a smoother shopping experience for the customer.
Review of the websites PenTest capability to withstand malware and cyber attacksPen testing should be considered an ongoing activity rather than a set of snapshot tests. As websites are amended, expanded and include additional linkages, new cyber risks and weaknesses can be introduced. Therefore ongoing Pen Testing as a business as usual process should be undertaken.
Top 20 retail sites resultsEdge analysed all the scores from the various tests deployed. The following table highlights the top 20 retailers who Edge considers are the frontrunners in terms of having fast, intuitive and well-functioning websites. Leading the field is footwear retailer Gabor, scoring a total of 563.2 points out of a possible 600, where 100 points were awarded for fully loaded time, system usability scale, average image weight, functioning links, Yslow score and PageSpeed score.
Out of the top 20, fashion retailers dominated, with 40% gaining a top slot, including Long Tall Sally, Louis Vuitton, Jack & Jones, Burberry, Victoria’s Secrets, The North Face, Whistles and Gant. Technology and home improvement followed with 15% each, including retailers Microsoft, Apple, Novatech and Clas Ohlson, Ikea and Victorian Plumbing.
RANK COMPANY
1 GABOR
2 CLAS OHLSON
3 MICROSOFT
4 APPLE
5 ZALANDO
6 LONG TALL SALLY
7 THOMAS SABO
8 LOUIS VUITTON
9 IKEA
10 VICTORIAN PLUMBING
11 JACK AND JONES
12 THORNTONS
13 LLOYDS PHARMACY
14 NOVATECH
15 BURBERRY
16 BEAUTY BAY
17 VICTORIA’S SECRET
18 THE NORTH FACE
19 WHISTLES
20 GANT
TECHNOLOGY (15%)
FASHION (40%)
CONFECTIONARY (5%)
FOOTWARE (10%)
HOME IMPROVEMENT (15%)
JEWELLRY & WATCHES (5%)
COSMETICS (5%)
PHARMACY (5%)
Loading speed testA faster site means a better visitor experience, higher ranking in search results and lower bounce rate, people expect fast loading times today: - 47% of customers expect a chosen site
to load in less than two seconds.- 40% will abandon it entirely if it takes
longer than two seconds.
To enhance e-commerce website performance the retailer in question should consider:
Optimising images As eCommerce sites are generally filled
with high quality images and videos, it is crucial to optimise images to accelerate the retailers storefront. This can be achieved by compressing images before uploading – this should be an automatic activity during daily builds.
Minimise CSS, JavaScript and HTML This should also be standard practice
as it reduces wasted space for content transmission.
Housekeep redirects Websites should be regularly scanned for
old redirects that lead to pages deleted a long time ago. This is a good practice after switching or updating the site and can be automated as an activity.
Introduce a Content Delivery Network (CDN) This is a concept most relevant to UK
retailers deploying a global reach. A CDN provides a globally-distributed network of proxy servers which cache content, such as web videos, images or other bulky media and there are umpteen options to choose from. Basically the web browser will get the image from a nearby-cache (UK) rather than fetching it from afar (for example a US server). CDNs accelerate content delivery, reduce individual server load, enable audience segmentation (i.e. allow the retailers website to behave differently by country or region) and reduce network latency.
Analyse website end- to-end functions usingperformance testing To identify and breakdown the steps in
the functional journey and highlighting potential blockages.
During our testing of the in scope websites we found that the top 20 sites ranged from 0.8 to 2.8 seconds to load the landing page. While the slowest 20 sites loaded in 13.2 to 42.1 seconds. The average time to load among sites tested was seven seconds.
RANK COMPANY TIME (SEC.)
1 CLAS OHLSON 0.8
2 MASSIMO DUTTI 0.9
3 APPLE 1.1
4 GABOR 1.5
5 BONPRIX 1.6
6 FREEMANS.COM 1.6
7 DUNE LONDON 1.7
8 EBUYER.COM 1.7
9 KALEIDOSCOPE 1.9
10 MICROSOFT 2.1
11 LONG TALL SALLY 2.1
12 WILKO 2.2
13 HOME BARGAINS 2.3
14 BEAUTY BAY 2.4
15 THOMAS SABO 2.4
16 JACK WILLS 2.6
17 GRATTAN 2.6
18 USC 2.7
19 SMYTHS TOYS 2.7
20 LAKELAND 2.8
Yahoo speed test89% of sites were lower than a ‘C’ grade from the Yahoo! speed test. YSlow analyses web pages and their speed based on Yahoo’s rules for high performance web sites. Marked out of 100, YSlow extracts data from the page and generates a score for each rule, which produces the overall grade. The results were that 65 websites received a Fair (C) grade and 94 a Poor (D) grade.
RANK RETAILER SCORE
1 GABOR 95
2 HARRODS 95
3 CLAS OHLSON 94
4 VICTORIA’S SECRET 92
5 ZALANDO 92
6 HARVEY NICHOLS 89
7 MICROSOFT 88.8
8 SCREWFIX 88
9 RUSSELL AND BROMLEY 87.4
10 LOUIS VUITTON 85.8
11 L’OCCITANE 85
12 VICTORIAN PLUMBING 85
13 THOMAS SABO 85
14 HOLLAND AND BARRATT 85
15 EBUYER.COM 82.6
16 WAITROSE 82.4
17 LLOYDS PHARMACY 82.2
18 WHISTLES 82.2
19 APPLE 82
20 REEBOK 82
Google speed testGoogle’s speed test revealed that 85% of retailers’ sites scored ‘C’ or lower with 51 of the tested websites receiving an ‘F’. As many sites returned low scores, the suggestions above for website performance improvement should be considered. When profiling a web page with PageSpeed, it evaluates the page’s conformance. Google provides an overall score out of 100 for the website tested, based on several performance optimisation best practices.
PageSpeed Insights scores are calculated via Lighthouse, Google’s open-source, automated tool for improving the overall quality of web pages.
RANK RETAILER PERCENTAGE
1 FURNITURE VILLAGE 98
2 CHARLES TYRWHITT 96
3 CLAS OHLSEN 96
4 GAP 95.8
5 MARISOTA 94
6 WHISTLES 92
7 LLOYDS PHARMACY 91.6
8 JOULES 91
9 VICTORIA’S SECRET 90
10 LOOKFANTASTIC 89.9
11 NOTONTHEHIGHSTREET 89
12 HUGHES ELECTRICAL 87.2
13 SELFRIDGES 87
14 ITS 86.4
15 DUNELM 86
16 DUNE LONDON 86
17 ICELAND 85.8
18 SCREWFIX 85.6
19 THOMAS SABO 84.6
20 THE FRAGRANCE SHOP 84.4
Navigation testBetter navigation means more sales and a better bounce rate. If a potential customer cannot find what they want, they will leave, as opposed to a well organised site, where they can locate products they might want easily and can then progress to make a purchase.The System Usability is a simple, ten-item scale giving a global view of subjective assessments of usability. For our testing we created 10 questions and a grading system. From this our results concluded that over two thirds (68%) received a ‘B’ grade equating to good navigation. The average score was just under 80%, but top scorers reached past 90% and the lowest scorers was 67.5%.
RANK RETAILER PERCENTAGE
1 Adidas 92.5 %
2 Nike 92.5 %
3 Zara 90 %
4 eBay 90 %
5 Farfetch 90 %
6 Apple 87.5 %
7 PartyCity 87.5 %
8 Radley 87.5 %
9 Selfridges 87.5 %
10 Accessorize 87.5 %
11 Burberry 87.5 %
12 Louis Vuitton 87.5 %
13 Millets 85 %
14 Boots 85 %
15 Office 85 %
16 Schuh 85 %
17 Hugo Boss 85 %
18 Mainline Menswear 85 %
19 Microsoft 85 %
20 Reiss 85 %
Image quality testEdge Testing’s researchers used a Website Speed Test to provide a ranking for a variety of image aspects and categories. Using a grade range of A-F, it rates the image format, fit, compression rate, colour space and colour depth. When it comes to image weight, bigger is not always better, as uploading multiple large images can affect site performance because when a browser first loads a page, it downloads all of the page’s content. Therefore, pages with large image weight will load slowly, it is recommended that pages are kept under 5 MB. Companies need high quality images on their sites to get more views and a higher search result ranking. Users will also stay on site for longer and bounce less frequently. Most companies scored a ‘B’ on the Website Speed Test Tool’s image analyser, so their sites had fairly well optimised images.The websites we tested had an average image weight of 0.417MB, but some were as high as 4.2MB, about 10 times larger than the average. Low image weight means faster loading times, but could also mean poor quality images.
RANK RETAILER WEIGHT (KB)
1 FURNITURE VILLAGE 4
2 THOMANN 5
3 PAVERS 7
4 TOPPS TILES 7.4
5 MOULTON BROWN 8
6 GEAR4MUSIC 8
7 BRAVISSIMO 9.5
8 SALLY 10.5
9 LEGO 11
10 SPORTSBIKESHOP 11
11 THOMAS SABO 12
12 FIGLEAVES.COM 12
13 RICHER SOUNDS 13
14 PETSAT HOME 14
15 SKATEHUT.CO.UK 15
16 FASHION WORLD 16
17 MATALAN 17
18 NOTONTHEHIGHSTREET 18
19 WAYFAIR 19
20 EBAY 20
Broken links testBroken links send visitors to a webpage that no longer exists. If a customer encounters one, they are more likely to move on to another better functioning site. If customers leave a site quickly after visiting it, the site’s search result rankings will also be damaged.The Dead Link Checker tool showed us that most companies have few broken links on their sites – the average being that 97.1% of links are functional. The top 20 companies with most functioning links are:
RANK RETAILER PERCENTAGE
1 PETS AT HOME 100
2 TOOLSTATION 100
3 HAWKSHEAD COUNTRY WEAR 100
4 IKEA 100
5 MAJESTIC WINE 100
6 T J HUGHES 100
7 EBUYER.COM 99.98
8 FREEMANS 99.95
9 BRAVISSIMO 99.95
10 SKECHERS 99.95
11 SPORTSBIKESHOP 99.95
12 HOUSE OF FRASER 99.90
13 WATERSTONES 99.90
14 APPLE 99.90
15 GRATTAN 99.90
16 LITTLEWOODS 99.90
17 MICROSOFT 99.90
18 OCADO 99.90
19 OVERCLOCKERS UK 99.90
20 PARTYCITY 99.90
MethodologyEach test was conducted five times on each site from 11 - 18 August 2020 and an average for each test was taken to ensure more fair and reliable results. SpeedTo test load times GTmetrix was used to combine the 27-page speed recommendations and 19 Yslow recommendations of Google and Yahoo, respectively. The load time of the main – landing – site page was also tested. We came up with these results:
GRADE PAGE SPEED (GOOGLE) YSLOW (YAHOO)
A 9 5
B 30 22
C 44 65
D 79 94
E 34 54
F 51 11
NavigationTo find the ease of navigation on each site we used the System Usability Scale. This is a simple, ten-item attitude Likert scale which we used to quantify the website interface and functionality.
GRADE NUMBER OF WEBSITES PERCENTAGE
A 78 30
B 175 68
C 4 2
D 0 0
F 0 0
Image qualityWe analysed images on the tested sites using the Website Speed Test tool; the data this tool provides is determined by how the images on a website are displayed, considering format, fit, compression, colour space and depth. These factors are combined to give a grade, from A-F.
GRADE NUMBER OF WEBSITES PERCENTAGE
A 21 8.5
B 177 72.2
C 46 18.8
D 1 0.5
E 0 0
F 0 0
Broken linksFinally, we checked for any broken and dysfunctional links within each site utilising the Dead Link Checker tool to scan the sites and confirm that any links found do exist and have a destination. 92% of websites we tested showed fewer than 10 in 100 broken links, with the majority – 72% of all assessed sites having less than 1 in 100 links broken.
About Edge Testing Edge Testing is part of Eurofins Digital Testing a global leader in independent Quality Assurance, (QA), testing and cyber security for software systems, content and devices with operations in Belgium, Hong Kong, the Netherlands, Sweden, the UK and the USA. We help businesses in media, fintech, energy, governmental and other industries assure quality in their digital transformations towards Industry 4.0. We are a trusted provider in a broad spectrum of quality solutions covering: managed test services & augmented test resourcing, industry recognized advisory & training, including Eurofins Academy, lab-based testing services & infrastructure, test automation & conformance testing services & tools, comprehensive cyber security services & tools. Eurofins Digital Testing is part of Eurofins Scientific, a Life Science testing group which has more than 800 laboratories in over 50 countries and over 48,000 employees worldwide. Founded in 1987, Eurofins is the global leader in bio-analysis, with a level of expertise that makes it the first call for businesses around the world.
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