Thanksgiving Day 2023: The Fastest and Slowest Retail Websites

On Thanksgiving Day, consumers gobble up more than turkey and pumpkin pie. They also feast on savory online promotions and discounts.

Last year, online shoppers spent a record $5.29 billion on Thanksgiving Day, up a modest 2.9% year-over-year compared to double-digit increases in prior years.

Kicking off the critical holiday shopping season after months of preparation, retailers are hoping for a record-setting Cyber Week this year despite economic and financial pressures.

Retailers and eCommerce sites are off to a strong start!

Online spending on Thanksgiving Day totaled $5.6 billion, jumping 5.5% compared to a year ago.

Deal-hungry consumers have responded to significant discounts, especially in major gifting categories like electronics, toys, and jewelry.

Last year, mobile shopping accounted for 55% of sales. Mobile played an even bigger role this Thanksgiving, with nearly 60% of sales coming from mobile devices.

Looking ahead to Black Friday, eCommerce sales are expected to climb even higher and bring in $9.6 billion, which would also top last year’s record.

Methodology

This Cyber Week, we are focusing on three performance and user experience indicators for the Digital Commerce 360 Top 1000 leading online retailers: Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), Onload, and Time to Interactive.

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) is a Core Web Vital measuring perceived load speed because it represents how quickly the main content of a webpage is loaded. To provide a frictionless experience and better business outcomes, sites should aim to have an LCP of 2.5 seconds or less. Looking at one study, for example, product pages can see a 40% to 50% lower conversion rate when comparing users that experience a 2-second LCP versus a 4 to 5-second LCP.
• Onload is the average time required for the server to load all content on a page completely—everything from JavaScript, CSS, images, and more. Removing friction by improving page load time has been shown to contribute to higher conversion rates and revenue. For one online business, friction costs nearly half a billion dollars annually.
• Time to Interactive (TTI) is the time it takes for a webpage to become fully interactive. When a site appears fully loaded but nothing happens when the user tries interacting with it, that can cause major user friction, resulting in revenue loss.

The below report is based on Home Page measurements collected by Blue Triangle Synthetic Monitoring.

The Top 20 Fastest Sites

The 20 Fastest Retail and eCommerce Websites Ranked by Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)

The Top 20 Slowest Sites

The 20 Slowest Retail and eCommerce Websites Ranked by Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)

Key Takeaways

In the days and weeks leading up to Thanksgiving and the holiday shopping season, retailers warned of cautious consumer spending against a backdrop of shoppers being more deal-focused and making budget trade-offs.

While 5.5% year-over-year growth is an improvement from last year’s 2.9% gain, growth has slowed from years prior, indicating the competitiveness to attract discount hunters and retain them as loyal customers.

Source: Reuters | Black Friday brings out discount-hunters across U.S., Europe

Beyond the holidays, more than discounts alone are required to drive share of wallet except for the brands who have already earned unusually high loyalty.

Instead, Mark Friedman, a Direct-to-Consumer and Digital Marketing expert, shares on The Frictionless Experience podcast how brands can provide unique experiences that customers couldn’t get without being a loyal customer.

Recounting his experience creating a loyalty program for Steve Madden, he says:

"The idea behind it was to give experiences to that generation of customers, whether it be the opportunity to meet Steve himself or the opportunity to go to music venues with music artists that the company was supporting, things that you couldn't buy. I think that breeds loyalty."

Frictionless mobile shopping and mobile app experiences are one way brands attract shoppers and foster loyalty.  

“Consumers are embracing mobile wallets to break down friction between discovering on social and purchasing on mobile,” said Rob Garf, Salesforce VP and GM, Retail. Mobile shopping hit an all-time high, cementing its growing importance for retailers and eCommerce brands.