For the converted the benefits of Web Performance Optimization are blatantly obvious. To name a few: increased conversion rates, increased pageviews, lower server bandwidth costs, increased search engine rankings, and lower website abandonment rates.
These are all great benefits that come from implementing WPO but convincing a client or the company you work at that investing in WPO is worth the effort often requires cold hard facts.
Here is a roundup of some of the most compelling statistics proving the effectiveness of WPO to business results:
Facebook:
- Facebook pages that are 500ms slower result in a 3% drop-off in traffic, 1000ms is 6% drop-off
Amazon:
- If Amazon increased page load time by +100ms they lose 1% of sales
Google:
- If Google increased page load by +500 ms they get 25% fewer searches
Shopzilla:
- Shopzilla reduced page load times from 7 seconds to 2 seconds and saw a 7% – 12% increase in conversion rate
- Shopzilla increased pageviews by 25% by decreasing their load time by 5 seconds
- Shopzilla was able to support the same volume with 50% (402 to 200 nodes) less nodes, cutting server costs in half
Yahoo:
- If Yahoo increased page load times by +400ms they see a 5 – 9% drop in full-page traffic
Firefox:>
- If Firefox reduced load times by 2.2 seconds they saw an increase in download conversions by 15.4%
General:
- 47% of web users expect a page load of 2 seconds or less
- 14% of users will start shopping at a different site if a page loads too slow
- 40% of users will abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load
- 64% of shoppers who are dissatisfied with their site visit will go somewhere else to shop next time
- 52% of online shoppers claim that quick page loads are important for their loyalty to a site
Bing:
- A 1 second delay in Bing results in a 2.8% drop in revenue, 2 seconds is 4.3%
Netflix:
- Netflix saw a 43% drop in outbound traffic after enabling compression
Hotmail:
- Hotmail discovered a 6 sec delay in time to load caused a 40 Million drop in ad impressions per month, which equates to a $6 Million drop in ad revenues per year
Please use the comments bellow if you know of any statistics we missed or have your own case studies / experiment data to share.
Sources
Facebook: Velocity China
Amazon: http://glinden.blogspot.com/2006/11/marissa-mayer-at-web-20.html
Google: http://velocityconf.com/velocity2009/public/schedule/detail/8523
Shopzilla: http://velocityconf.com/velocity2009/public/schedule/detail/7709
Yahoo: http://www.slideshare.net/stoyan/dont-make-me-wait-or-building-highperformance-web-applications
Firefox: http://blog.mozilla.com/metrics/category/website-optimization/
General (Akamai): http://wwwfp.akamai.com/dl/whitepapers/ecommerce_website_perf_wp.pdf
Bing: http://velocityconf.com/velocity2009/public/schedule/detail/8523
Netflix: http://velocityconf.com/velocity2008/public/schedule/detail/3632
Hotmail: http://velocityconf.com/velocity2009/public/schedule/detail/8970
AOL: http://www.scribd.com/doc/16878352/The-Secret-Weapons-of-the-AOL-Optimization-Team