Tesco tops web site performance poll

Supermarket giant Tesco significantly outperforms its rivals when it comes to ordering groceries online, offering greater performance and availability, according to a new report.

Tesco recorded average web site availability of 99.47 per cent and average load time of 5.7 seconds in a study by internet performance firm Keynote Systems.

It was the only online grocery site to match its high web site availability with a good loading performance, said Keynote managing director Haran Sold.

Online grocery shopping is still relatively complex; to buy one item from one of the four major online shopping web sites, users must go thorough several pages, put the item into the basket and proceed to checkout.

Asda had the second highest average availability (99.27 per cent) but some pages took up to 31.8 seconds to load.

Ocado had the opposite problem, recording an average load time of 5.2 seconds, but site availability of just 93.8 per cent. Sainsburys’ site availability was 98.9 per cent but load times were up to 20.4 seconds.

‘This highlights the problem many customers face when trying to organise Christmas online,’ Sold said. ‘Christmas is a time when most web sites peak and traffic increases dramatically.

‘Load testing and preparation for peak traffic is usually done during the summer but it seems some retail sites underestimated the increasing reliance on web commerce and are now falling behind.’

Sold says Tesco’s performance could be the difference between retaining a customer and losing them to a rival.

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