European corporate Web sites are performing well with only 2.5%
suffering from excessive delays, according to
Hewlett-Packard.
Keen to sell web optimisation tools, HP has been offering a free
Web site performance checking service for corporate clients.
The company has received 5,000 requests for checking, and data from
the first 2,000 surveyed sites shows that 87.6% of the Web sites
responded within 10 seconds.
HP believes that customers will only tolerate eight seconds maximum
wait to show something on the page, 20 seconds to complete the
page, followed by six seconds before deciding to stay or
leave.
Frank Rosenfelder, Internet Business Solutions Programme Manager
for HP's Software Solutions Organisation, estimated that "$4.35bn
[£3.06bn] is lost in e-commerce sales each year due to unacceptable
end-user wait times online."
The service, which watches each Web site for a 24-hour period,
received requests from across Europe. In the UK, less than 1% of
the surveyed sites exceeded a delay of 10 seconds to respond.
HP spokeswoman Petra Wochnik added, "The survey is still too small
to paint an accurate picture of the state of European Web sites,
but we hope that more corporate Web site owners will take part so
that a fuller survey can be compiled."
Further information:
HP Web checking service:
www.hpchecksyourweb.com