News

Report: Only 16% of mobile retail sites load quickly enough

November 13, 2013

Consultancy The Search Agents has released the results of its study of the mobile sites of the top 100 U.S. multichannel retailers, scoring each of them on seven criteria that impact search engine friendliness and optimization.

Some of the findings from this report, the "Mobile Experience Scorecard," include:

Even though Google recommends that mobile sites load in 1 second or less, only 16 of the 100 sites managed to do so. The average load speed was 3.62 seconds.

Only 1 of the 100 sites used responsive web design, Google's recommended configuration for mobile. Of the remaining companies, 91 used dedicated mobile sites while the remaining 8 did not provide a separate mobile experience from the desktop version of their site.

Of the 100 sites, 98% featured store locators, 94% featured a search box, 58% linked to social media, 35% linked to an app, and 45% featured a click-to-call button.

The sites with the best mobile experience according to our criteria were REI, Toys "R" Us, and CVS.

The complete report is available for download here.

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