Ferrari beats Mercedes at the German Grand Prix -- in the battle of the F1 team websites at least
Sports fans are increasingly demanding a multi-channel experience, wanting all the news and all the facts on multiple devices. Website owners can’t afford to ignore this, as creating a superior user experience to that offered by rivals can mean a competitive advantage in terms of user happiness and, ultimately, website traffic.
Mobile, cloud and web performance specialist Keynote believes that not enough sites consider online performance during high-profile sporting events, and so decided to monitor and compare the performance of 11 popular Formula One constructor team web pages -- including Caterham, Ferrari, Force India, Lotus, Marussia, McLaren, Mercedes, Red Bull, Sauber, STR and Williams -- during the German Grand Prix (19-20 July). The results make for interesting reading.
Keynote tracked how performance in the race impacted the responsiveness of the website, and ranked pages in terms of average time to load and the availability of the page.
The company found that the Mercedes' constructor homepage dealt well with the attention it is likely to have received following Lewis Hamilton’s crash and Nico Rosberg’s win -- it loaded quicker than the overall average, at 4.77 seconds. Red Bull, on the other hand, was the slowest site to load overall, at 8.8 seconds. Williams, Force India and STR also experienced slowly loading web pages, at 7.23 seconds, 7.33 seconds and 8.25 seconds respectively. In terms of average load success rate, only three out of the 11 sites loaded successfully 100 percent of the time, which were Ferrari, McLaren and Sauber.
"It’s great to see that the Mercedes’ constructor web page performed well during the German Grand Prix, especially given that attention is likely to have been high, as Rosberg was competing at his home track," says Thomas Gronbach, digital quality expert at Keynote. "By contrast, we would recommend that the site owners of the constructor web pages that were slow to load -- particularly Red Bull, Williams, Force India and STR -- better prepare their sites to ensure fans receive the best possible experience. They can do this by monitoring and testing sites more rigorously, to weed out any problems that are likely to be slowing sites down, especially when the pressure comes from interested fans".
The full results were are follows:
| Measurement | Performance (seconds) | Availability (percent) |
| F1 - Caterham | 4.75 | 99.93 |
| F1 - Ferrari | 4.41 | 100 |
| F1 - Force India | 7.33 | 99.72 |
| F1 - Lotus | 3.25 | 99.93 |
| F1 - Marussia | 2.94 | 99.93 |
| F1 - McLaren | 5.39 | 100 |
| F1 - Mercedes | 4.77 | 99.86 |
| F1 - Red Bull | 8.8 | 99.65 |
| F1 - Sauber | 5.02 | 100 |
| F1 - STR | 8.25 | 99.65 |
| F1 - Williams | 7.23 | 99.59 |