E-commerce websites are often slow and cumbersome, and that costs the entire digital retail enterprise money, according to a study reported by Catchpoint, an Internet performance monitoring firm.
The report, which applies the company’s Digital Experience Score Endpoint, suggests some of the world’s biggest retailers are leaving billions on the table because their websites are too slow or unstable.
Global retailers ranking tops in the scoring, according to Catchpoint, are:
- Aldi at 100
- Action at 99
- Ikea at 98
- Euronics International at 97
- Aspiag at 97
- Apple at 96
- TJX Cos. 96
- Adeo at 96
- Carrefour at 96
- Lulu Group at 94
In contrast, Amazon scored a 90, coming in ranked at number 16, while Walmart scored a 68, coming in at 31, and Costco scored a 66, coming in at 35.
Investment in global e-commerce is trending to hit $1 trillion in digital transformation spend by 2032 as more retailing shifts online. The ongoing investments in e-commerce won’t provide maximal returns if efficiency and effectiveness aren’t improved, according to Catchpoint. The company warns that retailers who fail to meet customer expectations risk being shortchanged as e-commerce gains. Digital experience, not brand size, separates leaders from laggards, Catchpoint asserted, with retailers who aren’t atop the e-commerce sales leadership, such as Aldi, demonstrating they can outpace the leaders, while Apple shows that even the biggest brands can deliver speed and stability when they make it a priority.
Overall, speed as measured by retailers at home base isn’t necessarily what’s experienced by customers across the United States and the globe, with various downloads experienced within the same country and international website variations developed for diverse nations not performing with the same efficiency. Catchpoint reported shoppers in Asia and Africa wait up to three times longer than those in North America and Europe for the same sites to load, highlighting digital infrastructure gaps that can be detected by monitoring.
The 2025 Retail Website Performance Benchmark Report analyzed the National Retail Federation Top 50 Global Retailers by testing performance using Catchpoint’s Global Agent Network, which consists of more than 3,000 agents worldwide. The company compared results from the controlled environments enterprises often use to test their apps with intelligent agents on the last-mile Internet service providers and wireless networks real shoppers rely on. The contrast reveals a gap between how retailers believe their sites are performing given lab conditions and the reality customers face.
Key Catchpoint study study findings include:
- Big Revenue Doesn’t Equal Speed. Some of the world’s top 10 retailers, with tens of billions in annual sales, struggle with slow sites. The homepage operated by a global giant with $50 billion in sales takes 9.4 seconds to load, which translates into the company potentially losing $3.4 billion to $24.1B annually in missed conversions.
- Smaller Brands Use Performance as a Competitive Advantage. Digital speed and consistency are proving to be a great equalizer. European retailer Action, with just $15 billion in revenue, ranked second in experience in the study overall with a near-perfect 99, indicating mid-sized players can go toe to toe with industry heavyweights by focusing on speed.
- Always-On Availability Doesn’t Equal an Always-Good Experience. Many retailers, including some of the biggest, demonstrated near-perfect uptime yet had lower overall experience ratings because their websites were slow in use and unstable in performance.
- Perfect Metrics Can Mislead. The study indicated that even when retailers do well with technical metrics, such as uptime and fast response, customers may still face sluggish or unstable performance that make navigation difficult.
“Retailers are investing billions in digital transformation, but too many are blind to the performance gaps their customers actually feel,” said Mehdi Daoudi, Catchpoint CEO and co-founder. “Your dashboards may be green, but if your shoppers are waiting 10 seconds on mobile in Tokyo or São Paulo, you’re losing trust, loyalty and most importantly sales, especially headed into one of the busiest times of the year.”
Dritan Suljoti, Catchpoint’s chief product and technology officer, added, “Retail growth in 2025 will be won on the last mile of the Internet. Our data shows brands can’t rely on uptime and averages. Customers feel the slowest path, not the best one. Leaders are measuring what shoppers actually experience and fixing it before it hits conversion.”
The Catchpoint Digital Experience Score Endpoint measures end-user device performance including that of central processing unit performance and memory constraints, network quality using packet loss, latency and round-trip times, and applications in an assessment of app performance as to load times, layout stability, responsiveness and error rates
