On the 1st day of the sales, Fasterize inevitably recorded record traffic. That said, while some e-commerce sites recorded a 129% increase in traffic compared to October 2018 and a 265% increase in sales for Black Friday, these 2019 sales overall didn’t unleash the passions.
The ritual 8am peak didn’t happen :'(
Sales, for better or for worse
Sales are a hectic time for e-commerce sites, often bringing to light problems that might otherwise go unnoticed. That’s why we’ve carried out an analysis, and a few phenomena have caught our attention.
Focus on a selection of e-commerce sites: from peak load management to unintentional pitfalls and best practices.
Methodology
We analyzed the performance indicators and load times of 80 French e-commerce sites over the period of December 2018, to compare them with the 1st week of the sales when activity is at its peak – in particular Speed Index, page weight and Time To Interactive.
These measurements are made with the classic WebPageTest, taking into account the median of results obtained over several tests in order to avoid peaks. We measure mobile pages, in 3G, on Chrome, with one measurement per day.
The results of the 2019 winter sales in images
So, what can we learn from these sales? What were the best and worst performances? How do we compare with the market? What are the best practices? Find the answers here.
What is the impact of loading speed? What are the best Speed Indexes and TTIs, the worst and the market average during sales?
Top 5 Speed Indexes during sales
Rue du Commerce is the big winner of our webperf ranking with a Speed Index of 2,628, followed by CDiscount (3,401), IKEA (3,963), 3 Suisses (4,327) and Leroy Merlin (4,340).
Webperf best practices for the whole year
Finally, here’s a roundup of a few best practices we’d encourage you to apply all year round, and not just when e-commerce activity intensifies!
These include automating your web performance. This way, you’ll optimize your resources on an ongoing basis, and won’t have to worry about the slightest new piece of content added by your teams.
Read the second part of our feature on the 2019 winter sales: [Soldes d’hiver 2/2] Sites that seem to have prepared themselves and those that have encountered difficulties.
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