Robert Castley

This month, an impressive seven out of the ten sites monitored achieved an average download time of less than two seconds, with Facebook being the only site with a response time of less than one second. Bebo, on the other hand, struggled with an average speed of 4.19 seconds and it also had the lowest success rate with only 98.59%. Twitter also appeared in the bottom half of both indices with a response time of 2.79 and it was in 9th place in terms of availability with 99.08%.

It’s quite surprising to see Twitter so far down on both indices given the popularity and simplicity of the site design. People use social networking sites to be kept up-to-date with instantaneous information and if they’re kept waiting or are unable to access a site, they’re likely to browse elsewhere.

As well as ensuring availability and optimum performance and availability online, site providers need to also consider their mobile offerings as more and more people use these sites from smartphones while on the go. People are no longer as accepting of download errors, delays or failures, regardless of how they’re trying to access a site, and so content providers need to make sure that their sites are available and quick to respond at all times if they want to continue to encourage users, and therefore advertisers.

About the author and Keynote Systems

Robert Castley has been solutions consultant at Keynote for nearly two years. Prior to working at Keynote, Robert worked as a Professional Services Consultant at a document management company, Macro 4, where he worked on developing custom web interfaces. Robert is passionate about web performance and optimisation and has over 10 years of web development experience. One of his proudest achievements is developing one of the world’s most popular Open Source Content Management Systems to the masses – Mambo, which now lives on as Joomla! Robert has a BTEC National Diploma in Computer Studies.

Keynote Systems is the global leader in Internet and mobile cloud monitoring. It provides companies with solutions for continuously improving the online experience. Founded in 1995, Keynote provides testing, monitoring and measurement products and services for any enterprise including online portals, e-commerce sites, B2B sites, mobile operators and mobile infrastructure providers. Keynote products and services help companies improve customer experience in four areas: Web performance, mobile quality, streaming and real user experience testing.