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2015 Holiday Shoppers Demand High-Performing Websites

Ann Ruckstuhl

What attributes do consumers expect from shopping sites? It's a question of critical importance to Internet retailers. At this time of the year, retail and ecommerce businesses are bracing for 15% more holiday shoppers than last year. What can they do to ensure that they get a generous slice of the holiday pie?


With the holidays on the horizon, SOASTA has released the results of a survey gauging the extent to which consumers' online behavior would be affected if websites had performance grades.

According to SOASTA's survey, website performance will strongly influence how Americans do their online holiday shopping. In fact, 70 percent of Americans' browsing and online shopping habits would be influenced by website performance grades, including how and where they would do their online holiday shopping.

Millennials' Need for Speed

Millennials in particular push holiday ecommerce performance. Among survey respondents, a whopping 75 percent of Millennial men and 81 percent of Millennial women said their browsing behaviors would be affected if websites had performance grades (compared to the 70 percent of the general American population cited above). Fifty-three percent of Millennial women said they would skip online shopping sites with poor grades, and 56 percent said they would do more shopping on sites with good grades.

Women are Santa's #1 Helpers

When asked in which situations Americans most rely on websites, 46 percent of American women said "online holiday shopping" as did 32 percent of American men. However, no other demographic group shops online as often as Millennial women. While the average American finds a website most important for online holiday shopping, 58 percent of Millennial women report that online holiday shopping is the most important use of a website.

Are Most Internet Retailers Failing Shoppers?

When asked which websites are generally best performing, Americans are hard-pressed to name any that are top performing, suggesting that for most sites, there is room for improvement. Only 19 percent said that consumer product sites are generally the best performing, and only 17 percent praised big box store sites.

The Importance of Getting an A on Your Report Card

So, going back to my original question — what shopping site attributes do consumers value most? Our survey findings make it clear that only the top-performing sites will earn their business, by offering superior:
■ Ease of navigation

■ Speed

■ Reliability

The reality is that no one wants to shop online for the holidays at a retail site that received a failing, or even average, grade in website performance. These findings suggest that Internet retailers with lower scores could benefit significantly by improving the performance of their websites.

Holiday shoppers are pressed for time, in a hurry to complete dozens of tasks on their holiday to-do lists. They just don't have the time to wait around if a site is slow, for example. And if they move on, they won't make purchases and, perhaps more importantly, will likely not return.


Ann Ruckstuhl is CMO of SOASTA.

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2015 Holiday Shoppers Demand High-Performing Websites

Ann Ruckstuhl

What attributes do consumers expect from shopping sites? It's a question of critical importance to Internet retailers. At this time of the year, retail and ecommerce businesses are bracing for 15% more holiday shoppers than last year. What can they do to ensure that they get a generous slice of the holiday pie?


With the holidays on the horizon, SOASTA has released the results of a survey gauging the extent to which consumers' online behavior would be affected if websites had performance grades.

According to SOASTA's survey, website performance will strongly influence how Americans do their online holiday shopping. In fact, 70 percent of Americans' browsing and online shopping habits would be influenced by website performance grades, including how and where they would do their online holiday shopping.

Millennials' Need for Speed

Millennials in particular push holiday ecommerce performance. Among survey respondents, a whopping 75 percent of Millennial men and 81 percent of Millennial women said their browsing behaviors would be affected if websites had performance grades (compared to the 70 percent of the general American population cited above). Fifty-three percent of Millennial women said they would skip online shopping sites with poor grades, and 56 percent said they would do more shopping on sites with good grades.

Women are Santa's #1 Helpers

When asked in which situations Americans most rely on websites, 46 percent of American women said "online holiday shopping" as did 32 percent of American men. However, no other demographic group shops online as often as Millennial women. While the average American finds a website most important for online holiday shopping, 58 percent of Millennial women report that online holiday shopping is the most important use of a website.

Are Most Internet Retailers Failing Shoppers?

When asked which websites are generally best performing, Americans are hard-pressed to name any that are top performing, suggesting that for most sites, there is room for improvement. Only 19 percent said that consumer product sites are generally the best performing, and only 17 percent praised big box store sites.

The Importance of Getting an A on Your Report Card

So, going back to my original question — what shopping site attributes do consumers value most? Our survey findings make it clear that only the top-performing sites will earn their business, by offering superior:
■ Ease of navigation

■ Speed

■ Reliability

The reality is that no one wants to shop online for the holidays at a retail site that received a failing, or even average, grade in website performance. These findings suggest that Internet retailers with lower scores could benefit significantly by improving the performance of their websites.

Holiday shoppers are pressed for time, in a hurry to complete dozens of tasks on their holiday to-do lists. They just don't have the time to wait around if a site is slow, for example. And if they move on, they won't make purchases and, perhaps more importantly, will likely not return.


Ann Ruckstuhl is CMO of SOASTA.

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As businesses increasingly rely on high-performance applications to deliver seamless user experiences, the demand for fast, reliable, and scalable data storage systems has never been greater. Redis — an open-source, in-memory data structure store — has emerged as a popular choice for use cases ranging from caching to real-time analytics. But with great performance comes the need for vigilant monitoring ...

Kubernetes was not initially designed with AI's vast resource variability in mind, and the rapid rise of AI has exposed Kubernetes limitations, particularly when it comes to cost and resource efficiency. Indeed, AI workloads differ from traditional applications in that they require a staggering amount and variety of compute resources, and their consumption is far less consistent than traditional workloads ... Considering the speed of AI innovation, teams cannot afford to be bogged down by these constant infrastructure concerns. A solution is needed ...

AI is the catalyst for significant investment in data teams as enterprises require higher-quality data to power their AI applications, according to the State of Analytics Engineering Report from dbt Labs ...

Misaligned architecture can lead to business consequences, with 93% of respondents reporting negative outcomes such as service disruptions, high operational costs and security challenges ...

A Gartner analyst recently suggested that GenAI tools could create 25% time savings for network operational teams. Where might these time savings come from? How are GenAI tools helping NetOps teams today, and what other tasks might they take on in the future as models continue improving? In general, these savings come from automating or streamlining manual NetOps tasks ...

IT and line-of-business teams are increasingly aligned in their efforts to close the data gap and drive greater collaboration to alleviate IT bottlenecks and offload growing demands on IT teams, according to The 2025 Automation Benchmark Report: Insights from IT Leaders on Enterprise Automation & the Future of AI-Driven Businesses from Jitterbit ...

A large majority (86%) of data management and AI decision makers cite protecting data privacy as a top concern, with 76% of respondents citing ROI on data privacy and AI initiatives across their organization, according to a new Harris Poll from Collibra ...

According to Gartner, Inc. the following six trends will shape the future of cloud over the next four years, ultimately resulting in new ways of working that are digital in nature and transformative in impact ...

2020 was the equivalent of a wedding with a top-shelf open bar. As businesses scrambled to adjust to remote work, digital transformation accelerated at breakneck speed. New software categories emerged overnight. Tech stacks ballooned with all sorts of SaaS apps solving ALL the problems — often with little oversight or long-term integration planning, and yes frequently a lot of duplicated functionality ... But now the music's faded. The lights are on. Everyone from the CIO to the CFO is checking the bill. Welcome to the Great SaaS Hangover ...

Regardless of OpenShift being a scalable and flexible software, it can be a pain to monitor since complete visibility into the underlying operations is not guaranteed ... To effectively monitor an OpenShift environment, IT administrators should focus on these five key elements and their associated metrics ...