Petco set to offer faster load times on its e-commerce site

Petco Animal Supplies Inc. soon will offer online pet supply shoppers an e-commerce site that could load 5.5 seconds faster than the current one.

Petco, No. 202 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide, has for about three weeks been integrating and testing web site acceleration technology from Strangeloop, says Jason Zimmerman, the retailer’s application development manager. “We want to push it live in another week,” he says.

Tests of the Site Optimizer technology have resulted in average reduced page load times of 5.5 seconds, Petco says. Zimmerman says the time savings comes from Petco using the technology to consolidate the number of objects being downloaded to the web browser to about 50 from at least 150, cutting the data traffic jam.  Petco installed a server in its data center for the technology, though retailers also can access the service remotely.

Earlier this year, AutoAnything.com, No. 204 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide, reported a 50% improvement in page load times after implementing Site Optimizer. The retailer says web site traffic increased up to 13%.