Poor performance on the iPad threatens revenue for a third of leading websites, Zeus research reveals

CAMBRIDGE, UK – 14 December 2010 – Research conducted by Zeus Technology, the only pure software-based application traffic management (Application Delivery Controller) company, today shows that one third of the world’s most visited sites take more than a second to load on an iPad. 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. (1)

Despite being some of the most traffic heavy sites worldwide, the quickest websites included the homepages of Google, Mozilla and BBC which clocked speeds of 0.046, 0.015 and 0.078 seconds respectively on the iPad. 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.

The research also revealed that the majority of the top visited sites globally are not offering a fully optimized web experience on the iPad. 82 per cent did not have any video on their iPad sites and one third (33 per cent) featured a video that would not work on the device due to compatibility issues.

Additionally, results showed more than a quarter (27 per cent) of the top 100 sites do not offer personalization options on their iPad sites, such as members areas or log-in sections. Zeus is calling for all websites yielding large volumes of traffic 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.

Kosten Metreweli, Chief Marketing Officer, Zeus Technology, comments, “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. 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. 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.”

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(1) http://www.agigatech.com/pdf/pdf_AES2010_Hauck_for_web.pdf

Methodology
Zeus Technology measured the performance of top 100 sites on the iPad in November 2010. The 100 sites surveyed is based on Nielsen’s list of top 100 websites. Delivery times were calculated using http://www.periscopeit.co.uk/.

About Zeus Technology
Zeus software enables our customers to create, manage and deliver exceptional online services in Physical, Virtual and Cloud environments. Implementing a Zeus solution allows organizations to visualize and manipulate the flow of traffic to their web-enabled applications, thus ensuring a consistently robust web infrastructure. Coupled with the ability to deploy new online services very quickly, Zeus helps provide the competitive advantage businesses need, by making their online services faster, more reliable, more secure and easier to manage. Zeus software can be deployed on industry standard hardware, virtual machines and any Cloud platform, making it the right strategic choice for today and tomorrow. Zeus holds strategic partnerships with world-class companies such as Amazon Web Services, Dell, HP, IBM, Intel, Joyent, Logicworks, Oracle, Rackspace, Sun, Qualcomm and VMware. Zeus powers over one million website infrastructures across the world including, the BBC, BT, Comic Relief, Domino’s Pizza, Gilt Groupe, ITV, Play.com, See Tickets, STA Travel and Virgin Media. Zeus is in a unique position to assist any business looking to enhance their mission-critical Internet service infrastructure. For more information, visit www.zeus.com.

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This release was published on openPR.