WEB EXPERIENCE DURING THE WORLD CUP – KEYNOTE KICKS OFF MONITORING, WITH WORRYING RESULTS
The World Cup 2014 kicks off today, and mobile, internet and cloud performance specialist, Keynote, is monitoring the homepages of international football associations* and FIFA World Cup sponsors**, to assess the online experience offered during the competition. Keynote found that in the week prior to its start (3rd to 10th June), most sites were already performing below average, with Pepsi and Budweiser already experiencing problems with content loading. In terms of average availability, however, the sponsor sites successfully loaded 99.17 percent of the time and the football association sites, 98.47 percent.
On average, the football association homepages took more than 10 seconds to load and the sponsor homepages took more than six seconds. Only three sites out of the 44 monitored loaded in less than three seconds – Netherlands football association and sponsors, Castrol and Johnson and Johnson – which is an acceptable load time for visitors.
Online users visiting the Pepsi homepage struggled to click any of the content initially and Budweiser appears to slowly load only the age verification page when, in fact, other content was loading in the background, causing frustration for visitors. Other stats included the football associations for Ecuador, Ivory Coast and South Korea, which offered homepages with more than 10MB of content; this is likely to cause usability issues given the internet connection speed in these countries.
Thomas Gronbach, web performance specialist at Keynote, offers the following comment on the web performance:
“With the World Cup kicking off today, we would hope that the homepages of football associations and FIFA World Cup sponsors would be ready and waiting for an influx of traffic. While the sponsor sites do tend to be smaller and more optimised than the football associations, showing a consideration for the impact of the World Cup, some homepages – Pepsi and Budweiser – had some teething issues.
“It is absolutely critical that, at this early stage in the World Cup, site owners test and monitor their homepages to ensure they are not crippled by an onslaught of users. Poorly loading and crashing sites are not acceptable, particularly when sponsors have paid out millions for adverts and football associations have had years to get their sites in order. Failing to prepare will not only put brand reputation at stake, but any profit to be made from users checking out sites, may be compromised. For such a high-profile, global event, this is certainly not an opportunity that can be missed due to a basic lack of groundwork.
“We will be keeping a close eye on the homepages of these sites throughout the World Cup championship – let’s see which of them are taking down their competitors and which are letting in own goals!”
*Football associations homepages being monitored: Netherlands, Ghana, England, FIFA, Russia, Germany, USA, Italy, Argentina, Brazil, France, Australia, Ecuador, Japan, Spain, Mexico, Ivory Coast and South Korea.
**Football sponsors homepages being monitored: Castrol, Johnson and Johnson, Garoto, Itau, Visa, Panasonic, Coca-Cola, Mastercard, McDonalds, Yingli Solar, Volkswagen, Hyundai, Continental, Apexbrasil, Moy Park, Sony, Centauro, Virgin, Libertyseguros, Nike, Pepsi, Adidas, Budweiser, Wiseup, Emirates and Oi.
