The UK’s top e-retailers were sluggish on the biggest online shopping day of the year, with some taking up to 28 seconds to load, according to data.
The research, taken yesterday by Site Confidence, an NCC Group company found that the average download speed for the UK’s top e-retailers was just under 12 seconds, as a result of increased traffic on Mega Monday.
The website monitoring and load testing specialist found figure is higher than the desired eight-second target.
Many e-retailers experienced problems throughout the day, and five of those monitored by Site Confidence suffered periods of downtime of up to three hours.
IMRG figures show that sales for Mega Monday 2010 were 21 per cent higher than the same day last year. The busiest minute was 13.15, when consumers spent £831,000.
Adverse weather conditions are thought to have boosted online sales and spending throughout December is likely to exceed £6.4bn, according to IMRG.
Bob Dowson, director at Site Confidence, said: “It is clear that a number of e-retailers struggled yesterday and may have missed out on valuable sales by failing to prepare for the most profitable day of the year. The websites that flourished on Mega Monday prepared well in advance to maximise sales, using rigorous load testing to assess the ability of their systems to cope with increased traffic, and performance testing to ensure a seamless user journey.”