Which Winery E-Commerce Platform is the Fastest?
We surveyed over 750 winery websites to see which commerce platform performs the best.
Published by Andrew Means
June 27, 2024
With e-commerce, time is money.
A 1-second quicker load time results in a conversion rate increase of 5.6%.* With an average wine order, that can equate to hundreds of dollars every day. So which e-commerce platform helps you achieve the best speed?
* SOURCE: portent.com
The three most common wine e-commerce platforms in our research were WineDirect, Commerce7, and OrderPort. Of these, each had a wide distribution of speed scores.
WineDirect Speed Distribution Scores
WineDirect had the highest average score (49.5), but few WineDirect sites scored above 70pts.
Commerce7 Speed Distribution Scores
Commerce7’s performance scores were a little lower than WineDirect, giving it an average score of 47.7, but it had more sites with scores above 80.
OrderPort Speed Distribution Scores
OrderPort’s performance scores were distributed primarily between 30 and 50, with an average score of 39.4
E-commerce Platform Speed Scores
Other common platforms included VinoShipper and Squarespace, which both peaked in the 20-40 range, and Wordpress & WooCommerce, which showed relatively wide score distributions.
Key Takeaways
The two most common platforms, WineDirect and Commerce7 (C7), are both capable of providing relatively performant shopping experiences, but most sites are not optimized for speed, and as such neither performs better than the average.
We suspect the slight differences in overall results stem from WineDirect sites being slightly faster out of the box (more mid-scoring sites than C7), while C7 sites are more likely to be customized and optimized for speed (more high scoring sites than WD).
OrderPort struggles with performance. No OrderPort site scored above 70, and the vast majority were below 50. While this doesn’t reflect well on the platform, this may be due to poor maintenance on the sites as much as the platform itself.
The most common score range for all websites was 30-40, well below industry standards and best practices. In a world where time is money, this performance represents many thousands, if not millions, of dollars in lost sales from sluggish loading sites.
So what does all this mean?
We wish we could tell you one platform will solve all your performance needs. Unfortunately that’s not the case. The truth is that most platforms can provide a relatively quick shopping experience, but all require additional investment to achieve meaningful performance numbers.
To learn more about how your website is performing, from brand expression, to design, to performance, request your full Winery Scorecard Report at hello@transom.design