While some might accept mobile Web sites performing slower, given the bandwidth of wireless networks, a recent survey of 1,000 mobile Web users found that the majority actually expect Web sites to load as quickly, almost as quickly, or faster on their mobile phone, compared to their home or work computer. The same survey also revealed that two out of three people have encountered problems accessing mobile Web sites, with slow load times their chief complaint. 85 percent said they are only willing to retry a mobile Web site two times or less if it does not work initially, and 40 percent said they'd likely visit a competitor's mobile Web site instead.

"This holiday season will be the first true test of the performance of retailers' mobile sites," said Matt Poepsel, VP of Performance Strategies, Gomez division, Compuware. "And while we know that online shoppers have low tolerance for long wait times for traditional online shopping Web pages, it will be interesting to see whether they will be willing to sacrifice speed for the convenience of mobile browsing and shopping. The wide disparity found in the new Gomez mobile benchmark highlights that many retailers have more work to do to improve their mobile Web performance or risk losing a potential slice of the holiday action."

The Gomez Mobile Retail Web Performance benchmark joins Gomez's existing benchmarks that measure and rank the Web performance of the nation's top retailers and can be accessed at: