Mr. Roger Lopez Last month we discussed how the number of files that a site is made up of can impact their website’s response time. This month, we’ll look at efficiency.
Efficiency is basically how fast a website can send data back to the web browser. In an effort to keep this example simple, we will assume that anything between the hotel’s web server and the client’s browser is in the internet "cloud" … and we won’t go into what happens there. The general rule for optimal efficiency is: the more bytes that can be sent per second, the better, meaning the user has to wait less. Of course, like anything in life, there is a limit to how many bytes can actually be sent at a time and those bytes can’t travel at more than two-thirds the speed of light.
In the past we’ve discussed how one of the ways to make a website faster is to have a small number of bytes. In the ideal world a website would be so light that efficiency would not be an issue. However, in the real world, web developers have to create websites based on many factors. They must meet the design team’s needs, they must include the content required by marketing and whoever else has a say into what should make up the website. So the next best thing is to send as many bytes per second as possible.
Last month we compared Marriot and LasVegas.com and, this month, we’ll continue that comparison by looking at their efficiency. Just to bring everyone up to speed, Marriot usually places top three in our benchmark while LasVegas.com, for the most part, ranks in the bottom three.
In the chart above we can see that there is a significant difference between the two sites in terms of number of bytes. And, as we’ve mentioned, the more bytes your site has, the more time it will take to download. However being able to ‘ship’ more bytes per second will also make a big difference. Let’s say we do an experiment and assume that the sizes are inverted and Marriot is 1094027.43 bytes and LasVegas.com 718662.28. Now let’s take their current efficiency rate and calculate what the response time would be based on those numbers.
We can see here that, even with the higher byte count, Marriot is significantly faster than LasVegas.com but also note the improvement that LasVegas.com could potentially garner. Of course, the numbers on this second chart are not real numbers but I used them to give an idea of how things might look if the roles were reversed.
What to take away from this? Marriot is doing things right, not only on byte size but also in how they deliver their application. And LasVegas.com has some work to catch up with the frontrunners.
Gomez Hotel Performance Index
October Results (10/1/07 – 11/1/07)
The Gomez Hotel Performance Index helps hoteliers keep an eye on the competition, measure customer experiences, and accurately understand the connection between web application performance, customer behavior and business results. Covering the top online hoteliers and aggregators, it measures the responsiveness; availability and consistency of the benchmark participants along these metrics (see full methodology):
Success Rate Summary
The majority of the hoteliers had a success rate above the benchmark average of 98.47% for the month of October. Gomez considers a rate above 98% as excellent performance. In October, 18 of the 25 hoteliers performed above the benchmark average. Notables that performed below the benchmark average were Hilton, Travelocity and Orbitz.
Response Time Summary
The benchmark average for October was 13.13 seconds which is slower than September’s 12.57 seconds. Radisson and Marriott continued to lead the pack with sub six second response times. At the bottom of the chart we find OneTravel.com.
Consistency Summary
Consistency is a measure of the disparity of the response time from visit to visit for completed transactions. The average consistency for the benchmark in October was 7.23 seconds. 16 of the 25 hoteliers performed above the benchmark average. Expedia tops the chart. Notables below the benchmark average include Hyatt and Orbitz.
Roger Lopez is a Benchmark Analyst in Gomez’s Professional Services Group. His role includes analyzing benchmark data reported by Gomez ExperienceFirstTM network and working directly with customers to optimize their testing. Prior to joining Gomez just over a year ago, Roger held positions as a technology support executive at TTG, Inc., a business territory design software company and in search engine optimization for BizX, a bartering service for online marketplaces. Roger has a degree in Systems Engineering from the Universidad de las Americas. Roger can be reached at rlopez@gomez.com
