Revealed: The property industry’s slowest (and fastest) websites
Uswitch says slow estate agency websites can significantly impact earning potential for firms that rely on referrals from third parties.
There is nothing more frustrating for online house hunters than slow estate agency or portal websites.
And now switching platform Uswitch has published a league table of industry performance – including that Haart and EasyProperty have the slowest sites in the UK, taking nearly six seconds to load, it is claimed.
Uswitch has rated sites by how quickly they become ‘interactive’ – a higher score means a faster website – which is the point when enough of the page has loaded that you can click a link.
Performance varies wildly and makes the results very revealing both for mobile apps and websites.
Your Move received the best overall score with 92 points out of 100 followed by 86 for Zoopla. This is lucky for Uswitch, which is the sister company of the portal.
- The best desktop performance was awarded to Foxtons (83) and OnTheMarket (82).
- For mobile apps, Rightmove was the quickest (77) followed by Tepilo (72).
- At the bottom of the league is EasyProperty (21) and Haart (19) for overall performance, Sold.co.uk (28) and Knight Frank (29) for deskstop and Strutt & Parker (32) and ExpressEstateAgency (32) for mobile.
In terms of time to load, the fastest desktop website was Zoopla (just over a second) and worst was EasyProperty.com at nearly 6 seconds.
“For property brands that rely heavily on referral programmes, it is worth noting our research found over half of people would judge a brand negatively for having a slow website and 76% wouldn’t recommend a slow website to a friend,” says a Uswitch spokesperson.
“Understandably, 80% of people feel frustrated and annoyed when they visit a slow website.
“Whilst over 55s were the most annoyed age group (85%), the least annoyed 16-24 year olds still overwhelmingly said slow websites make them feel annoyed and frustrated (75%).”
Property industry – overall website performance
- Your Move – 92/100
- Zoopla – 86/100
- OTM – 83/100
- Rightmove – 76/100
- Tepilo – 72/100
- Foxtons – 70/100
- Purplebricks – 61/100
- Dexters – 60/100
- eMoov – 60/100
- PrimeLocation – 55/100
- Hamptons International – 55/100
- KFH – 50/100
- HouseSimple/Strike – 50/100
- YOPA – 48/100
- Savills – 45/100
- SellMyHome – 43/100
- Express Estate Agency – 42/100
- Winkworth – 40/100
- Connells – 39/100
- Strutt & Parker – 34/100
- Knight Frank – 29/100
- Sold.co.uk – 28/100
- Haart – 21/100
- EastProperty -19/100
