What Can Be Learned From Giant E-Commerce Websites?

While just a handful of businesses dominate the e-commerce landscape, smaller yet fast-growing online retailers are a force to be reckoned with. Often more agile and dynamic than their larger, more established counterparts, such e-commerce websites are growing in importance as well as in performance. 
 
vshosting~ is one of the leading providers of cloud hosting services for IT and e-commerce businesses in Europe. The company recently released its Retail Readiness Report that has revealed what it calls 'a major performance gap in UK’s e-commerce landscape.' While the major players in the UK e-commerce sector have continued to enjoy success online, they are falling behind in several web metrics which, according to the vshosting~ report, could 'impact future security and success'.

The research looked at several website performance metrics for industry leaders and for the most rapidly-growing e-commerce brands, aggregating and then comparing the resultant figures. 

One of the key findings of the research is that a massive 67% of the largest UK e-commerce websites are missing the 1-2 second loading time that is recognised as the industry benchmark, with the slowest being recorded as in excess of 7 seconds. This compares to a figure of just over a third (36%) of the UK's fastest-growing online retailers. The discrepancy was found to result in a potentially-lower conversion rate of 16%. Other key findings detailed in the report include:   

• The vast majority of the biggest e-commerce websites (95%) have not yet embraced IPv6, the most recent Internet Protocol generation 
• 31% of the UK's top e-commerce companies are not currently using CDN (content delivery networks), as compared to just 15% of the fastest-growing online retailers

While up and coming e-commerce retailers can learn from the mistakes their larger counterparts are making, they can also learn from what is being done better, such as:

• Almost all (98%) of the biggest e-commerce companies have a mobile app, as opposed to only 21% of high growth e-commerce retailers 
• 52% of major online retailers use chatbots to enhance customer service, with just 26% of the fastest-growing online companies doing so

Brick technology has decades of experience in creating and managing e-commerce websites as well as providing industry-leading internet marketing services. If you want to grow and develop your business (which of course you do!) then we are ideally placed to help you achieve your goals. 

Start your journey with a detailed audit of your current website, which takes seconds to apply for is is provided absolutely free of charge with our compliments. You can then get in touch with us to begin the process of upgrading your website. For a limited time, everyone who agrees to a website refresh will receive a free three-month trial of our state-of-the-art SEO tool package, valued at £400. 
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