Black Friday Brazil 2013 web performance metrics

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BR ZiL
web performance metrics

49
+
3 centers1K
data
last mile
agents
purchase
5
transactions
4
mobile carriers
Brazil
ecommerce sites

Key take away points
32% average page load time increase during Black Friday Brazil 2013.
Average homepage page load times by network access technology:
Data Center (Backbone)
Last Mile (Cable, DSL, Wi-Fi)
Mobile cellular (3G)

9 seconds
15 seconds
22 seconds

32% Baseline average page load time increase between Black Friday Brazil 2012 & 2013
96% availability during Black Friday Brazil 2013 Last Mile:
24 seconds peak third party content (Facebook) Slowest state: Amapa 30 sec.
Fastest state: Acre 8.5 sec.
Some sites implemented wait queue’s during peak usage times, using custom error screens
BRAZIL BLACK FRIDAY 2013 web performance metrics

9 seconds

Backbone
average
response time

aggregated

Fastest site: 1.84s
Slowest site: 16.97s

range: 28 Nov 9AM - 30 Nov 2AM @ 30min interval

by site


9
9
9
9

9

%

Backbone
availability

Highest availability: 100%
Lowest availability: 70.83%
aggregated


by site

32%
cumulative

Black Friday seems to have started
earlier this year, registering a spike
on Monday November 25th.

average

increase in
response time
increase in average page
load times on Nov 29
from previous week

range: 22 November 9AM through
30 November 9AM 1 week prior


35%

Reduction in page peak times:
2012 peak of 80 seconds
2013 peak of 52 seconds

Black Friday 2013

range: Back Friday 2013 and
3 days before, 3 days after

Black Friday 2012
was November 23rd
range: Back Friday 2012 and
3 days before, 3 days after


32%

Increase in average baseline
Page load times

2013 average
(+3 days before/after Black Friday):

7.800 seconds
Black Friday 2013

The peaks are lower but the baseline
is higher by about 2 seconds

2012 average
(+3 days before/after Black Friday):

5.871 seconds
Black Friday 2012


The peaks are higher by
about 3 seconds but the baseline is
lower

22sec.

Mobile
average
response time

Remember, users are expecting the same
response times for mobile as for PC’s


range: 28 Nov 9AM - 30 Nov 2AM @ 1hr interval


15sec.

Last Mile
average
response time

cumulative
average


range: 28 Nov 9AM - 30 Nov 2AM @ 1hr interval
Site homepage only

Backbone vs Last Mile vs Mobile comparison:

single site homepage avg. response time
range: 28 Nov 9AM - 30 Nov 2AM @ 1 hr interval

single site homepage page weight


24sec.

3rd Party peak
response time

Third party components: FACEBOOK
(including Akamaized content)



Detail Friday November 29, starting 28 Nov 9AM through November 30 2AM
Backbone

First peak: midnight Nov 29

Wait queue’s implemented
between 1 and 8AM

cumulative

average


Last peak 9PM Nov 29

range: 28 November 9AM through
30 November 2AM @ 30min interval

CROWD Control
implementation of wait lines queues

page weight changed during maximum utilization
displaying “wait in queue” messages
availability drops at the same time

response time

availability

page weight


Mobile average response time & availability

response time by carrier
one mobile formatted site web page (not native app) in São Paulo

Availability by carrier

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Site behavior
Screen Captures

Server errors
Screenshots of errors encountered by different sites during Black Friday, this is what the end
users would have seen. Providing custom error screens with better explanations can help.


Server errors
Screenshots of application exception errors encountered during Black Friday on different sites.
These errors can be further analyzed and prevented with an internal APM monitoring tool.


Network errors:

Screenshots of what users would see on their browsers when
encountering network errors, like DNS and timeouts. These
were captured during Black Friday.


Error Messages
Instead of generic (or none) error messages like this:

or minimalistic like this:


Error Messages

Some sites provided visitors with informative custom messages:


complete web page image

RICARDOELETRO
sample error screen captured of site during Black Friday

Page was not displayed correctly, showing just text and images with
no style sheet.



WALMART
.com.br

Many product images loading at the same time.
When there’s low response time this will make the page
seem empty, users might hesitate taking next step.



LEADER

After several seconds the page still shows “loading” message.
Is the page ready?



FAST Shop

Same issue as seen in other pages, no style sheet, just raw images
and text. Makes site appear longer than it really is, more scrolling
needed by user to find items.



EXTRA

Page missing style sheet, just showing images and text.
This forces the user to reload page, retry later.
Most will not scroll down this very long page.



DI SANTINNI

Another example of missing style sheet, site just showing images
and text, forcing user to reload page. There’s a risk of the user
actually abandoning the page and going elsewhere.



POLISHOP

Heavy content like videos takes much longer to load and
will give the appearance of the page not being ready.



COLOMBO

Heavy flash content takes longer to load.
Take into account size and load time of this type of
Component, is it really worth the hit in performance?



CASA E VIDEO

Some images missing at the bottom of the page,
in this specific example nothing significant lost.



PONTOFRIO

Too many item images loading at the same time
if the server where these images reside is slow, it
will slow the entire page. This can make a user
abandon the page, check response times for
image components.


AMAZON.com.br

Application accessing visitor history, potential
bottleneck that can slow down page load time.
Is it really needed if you’re not logged in yet?

PASSARELA

Blank space, nothing displayed
takes too long to load


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purchase
transaction
& Last Mile

Purchase transaction steps
Just measuring the performance of an e-commerce homepage will not give you a complete
picture of the user experience. That’s why a full purchase script was recorded for 5 top sites
that would give us more insight into specific steps, for example the login – where the site
has to check the user db, authenticate it via SSL/HTTPS – this touches different elements of
the infrastructure.
Site A
Site B
Site C
Site D
Site E
Number of steps
10
9
9
8
8
Typical steps are:
Homepage
Search
View product detail
Purchase / warranty info
Login
Confirm ship-to address
Payment method
-

Back to shopping cart
Empty shopping cart
Exit
( the last three steps are necessary to replenish product stock )


Average response times from last mile
For all steps of purchase script from last mile locations in all of Brazil:

Average response time for login step (different step # on scripts)


Average response time for step 1 on all sites, homepage

Average response time for step 2 on all sites, search for same product

Average response time for step 3 on all sites, show product detail


Average response time by Brazil state, homepage only
Last Mile measurements


Average throughput by Brazil state, homepage only
Last Mile measurements


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Network
Components

Network component times

cumulative

As expected, First byte times are the major contributor to the increases in response times.
This is the time it takes the infrastructure of the site to send the first byte of content back to
the client, this includes Web, App and Database servers as well as network devices.
Proper load-testing can help identify weak areas within the infrastructure prior to a big
calendar event. Ideally, 1st byte response times should remain flat even with increased load.


Other network component times
cumulative

DNS times increased slightly after initial peak

Network connection times stable
throughout the day, ISP’s did a good
job by providing sufficient bandwidth

SSL encryption connection times
were also stable.

Page weight

# of Hosts

Extremely heavy pages, 4MB and 3MB!

Some sites had as many as 70 hosts just on their homepage, this means a lot of
third party content and tags that slow down page load times.


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metrics collected using Compuware synthetic monitoring

Backbone: Terremark / Verizon (SP), Level3 (SP), Alog (RJ)
Last Mile, over 1K agents available throughout Brazil
Mobile 3G networks: Claro, Vivo, Oi, TIM
purchase transactions recorded using the Compuware Gomez Recorder
error screens captured using SCoE (Screen Capture on Error)

Ricardo Aguilera, December 2, 2013
for more information contact: simone.lopes@compuware.com

Black Friday Brazil 2013 web performance metrics

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