Study finds comparethemarket has slowest response time
The poor response times of some insurance comparison websites could turn customers away, a study has found.
Gomez Inc, which helps firms optimises web performance, tested the homepages of a number of insurance comparison sites to measure their response times (how quickly visitors can access content and perform tasks on the site) when accessed from a home broadband connection on real end-users’ computers.
The average response times recorded for all the comparison sites in this benchmark failed to beat the two second threshold which, according to a recent Akamai Technologies / Forrester Consulting study, is the amount of time an average online shopper expects for a web page to load. The table below shows the full results. Of note, even the homepages of the best performing sites in the Gomez benchmark delivered response times that were at least four times slower than the two second threshold identified in the Akamai / Forrester report.
Company Homepage Average Response Time (seconds)
Endsleigh.com 8.82
DirectLine.com 8.85
Elephant.com 9.12
Confused.com 9.67
Admiral.com 11.26
Moneysupermarket.com 11.50
Churchill.com 14.18
Comparethemarket.com 17.87
European Vice President David Flower said: “The relative poor online performance of these high-profile brands highlights how challenging it is to deliver a quality web experience today. Nowadays, websites are multi-faceted and are delivered to users via a complex set of services called the Web application delivery chain. Problems can occur at any point along the chain, resulting in a number of common issues, including slow page loads and response times – as we’ve seen in this particular benchmark. The implications of a poor web experience are potential lost revenue, brand damage, low customer satisfaction and increased cost.”
Flower concluded: “The continuing uncertainty of today’s economic climate represents real opportunity for online comparison sites as consumers seek the best possible deal for their insurance renewals. The results of our performance benchmark reveal that some of these companies are in a better position to take advantage of the situation than others.”
