UK retailers top mobile website research

With all industry eyes ever more on new multichannel

opportunities, retailers are gearing up their mobile website offerings for a busy Christmas shopping period ahead.

John Lewis and Next have been ranked number one respectively for the speed and reliability of their mobile websites in July, according to new research by internet monitoring firm, Keynote Systems.

With an average load time of just 4.8 seconds, fashion and homeware specialist Next was deemed the fastest-to-load mobile site out of the 24 leading retailers assessed, while department store group John Lewis was the only website that could be accessed 100 per cent of the time.

In the study which also analysed mobile performances of retailers in Australia, France, Germany, Japan, Sweden and the US, all of the UK sites improved on their performance from June.

Robert Castley, Lead Solutions Consultant at Keynote Systems, commented: “It’s great to see UK retailers making positive changes as they realise the importance of mobile retail.

“As smartphones continue to become more popular and bespoke apps and mobile sites are more commonly used for browsing and purchasing online, retailers must maintain a high level of site optimisation in order to continue to attract and retain customers.”

“To prepare for the Christmas shopping season, retailers also need to load test their mobile websites to make sure that they can cope with the increased demands of high volumes of traffic and transactions,” Castley continued.