The Fastest Czech E-shop: Hornbach, 3v1, and T-shock

At the beginning of this case study, several questions arose. Which Czech e-shop is the fastest? Can large e-shops be fast enough? And how do we measure it?

We figured that if anyone could find out, it would probably be us, the speed consulting team at PageSpeed.ONE. (All right, we did have some help from our friends at Marketing Miner, indeed.)

Are you eager for the answers?

• Hornbach boasts the fastest Czech e-shop (among the top 100 in terms of visits) and Three in One (among the top 500).
• Some large e-shops have metrics at an excellent level, which is evident when using them. So yes, e-shops can indeed be fast. Even the big ones.
• Thanks to public data from Google (Chrome UX Report) and a dash of our expertise, calculating the fastest e-shop is rather straightforward.

We're excited to show you all the details in this article. But first, let's pose one more essential question: why consider speed important for e-shops?

Speed Brings Conversions and More Visitors to E-shops#

The speed of a website matters. For e-shops, it matters even more. A faster e-shop can grant you:

• A higher conversion rate, which is the outcome of numerous case studies.
• More visitors from Google, as speed is one of the ranking signals.
• Lower advertising costs, thanks to Google's speed assessment.

The human mind's threshold for detecting an immediate user interface response lies in the low hundreds of milliseconds. Most websites today fail to meet this threshold in both loading and user interface response, but every improvement counts and can reflect in crucial metrics.

We also have several measurements from large players that demonstrate the impact of speed:

1. Every tenth of a second of e-shop acceleration increased conversions by 8%. (Deloitte)
2. Each second of loading speed improvement on the homepage increased conversions by 2%. (Walmart)
3. Meeting Web Vitals? The probability of a page being abandoned decreases by 24%. (Google)

The Impact of Speed on Conversions#

The link between website speed and conversion rate is a fact we observe from practical case studies. These are collected, for instance, by the authors of WPOStats.

At PageSpeed.ONE, we know that the relationship between speed and conversions is unique to each website and tied to different speed metrics.

For our e-commerce clients, the most frequent correlation occurs with the LCP metric:

The graph shows the correlation between the Largest Contentful Paint (LCP, orange) metric time and the conversion rate on the website (blue).

It's evident that the most conversions were made by users with an LCP of around 1.5 seconds. Here, conversions reach about 6%. The median for this website is 2.172 seconds, where we see a halved conversion rate.

In other e-shops, we observe correlations with other metrics related to LCP (preceding it). These include metrics like Start Render, TTFB (backend), or FCP.

In all cases, it's a correlation, not a causal relationship. The impact of speed cannot be isolated from other factors such as marketing, product offerings, sales promotions, competition activities, and more. However, we are convinced that speed plays an important role in this mix.

Why have a fast website? Read further arguments on why speed is important.

Why Search for the Fastest E-shop#

We often encounter the belief that e-shops cannot be fast. They contain a lot of graphics, many products, many features, a large database, large images, lots of analytics, tracking scripts...

There is a rooted notion that only corporate presentations and small websites can be fast. We say that's not true. E-shops can be very well prepared and optimized.

The rules for meeting Core Web Vitals metrics are not complicated. It's just a matter of informing team members, educating them, and ensuring compliance with these rules through monitoring.

The goal of our study is to highlight positive examples that e-shops can be fast. And that this can manifest in their conversion rate.

A similar case study was previously conducted by Jindřich Fáborský, measuring the speed of Czech e-shops. Reshoper aims to help Czech e-shops, so they decided to focus on how Czech e-shops fare in terms of speed.

The Fastest Czech E-shop#

Our study is also based on data about traffic estimates from Marketing Miner, a Czech tool for SEO consultants. We thank Filip Podstavec for his cooperation!

Which website excels in Core Web Vitals metrics collected from real users? We focused on the Top 100 and Top 500 most visited Czech e-shops. Here are the results.

Top 10 Fastest E-shops for Mobile Devices from the Top 100 by Traffic#

For us, this is the main category. Mobile devices account for the vast majority of e-shop traffic, and here we selected the 100 most well-known brands.

	E-shop Name	PageSpeed.ONE Score
1.	hornbach.cz	0.5409
2.	trhknih.cz	0.5655
3.	xiaomicesko.cz	0.57765
4.	sportovniautodoplnky.cz	0.5841
5.	odkarla.cz	0.59865
6.	hodinky-365.cz	0.61575
7.	oriondomacipotreby.cz	0.6219
8.	bonami.cz	0.6699
9.	svet-svitidel.cz	0.6753
10.	zalando.cz	0.7053

In the royal category, among the top 100 largest e-shops on mobile devices, the authors of Hornbach.cz can proudly claim the throne of the fastest website. TrhKnih.cz, a relatively new player, takes second place, and XiamiCesko.cz comes in third. Congratulations to the creators of all three websites!

Among more recognizable brands in the top ten, we see names like Bonami and Zalando. We're also pleased to see our client Svet-Svitidel.cz in ninth place.

Top 10 Fastest E-shops for Desktop from the Top 100 by Traffic#

On desktop, the ranking at the top remains the same:

	E-shop Name	PageSpeed.ONE Score
1.	hornbach.cz	0.3519
2.	trhknih.cz	0.38595
3.	xiaomicesko.cz	0.41435
4.	odkarla.cz	0.45435
5.	bonami.cz	0.46125
6.	sportovniautodoplnky.cz	0.46555
7.	hodinky-365.cz	0.47715
8.	czc.cz	0.47765
9.	sneakergallery.cz	0.51025
10.	oriondomacipotreby.cz	0.51875

Once again, congratulations to the creators of Hornbach.cz, TrhKnih.cz, and XiamiCesko.cz. Among more recognizable brands, we see CZC.cz making it into the top ten.

Complete Table of the top 100 Czech e-shops.

Top 10 Fastest E-shops for Mobile Devices from the Top 500 by Traffic#

To be fairer, we also took the top 500 most visited e-shops from Marketing Miner's data:

	E-shop Name	PageSpeed.ONE Score
1.	3v1trivjednom.cz	0.3548
2.	spoilercentrum.cz	0.41295
3.	zahradnictvikrulichovi.cz	0.4717
4.	nejlevnejsipneu.cz	0.486
5.	prosikulky.cz	0.4887
6.	motokramek.cz	0.4915
7.	poshme.cz	0.5208
8.	kupkolo.cz	0.52815
9.	hadex.cz	0.53985
10.	hornbach.cz	0.5409

The category of the top 500 mobile websites was won by 3v1trivjednom.cz, built on the Shoptet platform. SpoilerCentrum.cz took second place, and the flower shop ZahradnictviKrulichovi.cz came in third. Congratulations.

Incidentally, the Shoptet client's placement demonstrates that a very fast website can be built on this platform. However, from our experience, Shoptet's natural speed is often unfortunately negatively affected by poor custom design implementation.

Among more recognizable brands in the top ten, we see NejlevnejsiPneu.cz and again Hornbach.cz.

Top 10 Fastest E-shops for Desktop from the Top 500 by Traffic#

Here, we encountered the overall fastest e-shop from our categories, when looking at the "PageSpeed.ONE score":

	E-shop Name	PageSpeed.ONE Score
1.	t-shock.eu	0.17415
2.	spoilercentrum.cz	0.2457
3.	levnestavebniny.cz	0.3075
4.	3v1trivjednom.cz	0.32455
5.	hornbach.cz	0.3519
6.	nejlevnejsipneu.cz	0.3596
7.	gigacomputer.cz	0.36855
8.	motokramek.cz	0.36875
9.	painguru.cz	0.37835
10.	prosikulky.cz	0.38315

In the category of the top 500 largest desktop websites, t-shock.eu emerged victorious with the lowest "PageSpeed.ONE score" by a significant margin.

Second place, just like on mobile, belongs to SpoilerCentrum.cz, and LevneStavebniny.cz took third. Congratulations to the developers and owners of the winning e-shops.

Among the top ten, we also see GigaComputer.cz and again NejlevnejsiPneu.cz and Hornbach.cz.

Complete Table of the top 500 fastest Czech e-shops.

How Did We Measure?#

In collaboration with Marketing Miner, we prepared a list of the largest and most visited e-shops. We downloaded user speed data from Google, added weights for individual metrics, and ranked everything.

We didn't have to search long for metrics. We chose the Core Web Vitals set (LCP, FID, CLS, and the new INP).

We used data from the Chrome UX Report. It's a database of user experience quality data collected by the Chrome browser.

• LCP - Largest Contentful Paint (How fast does it load?)
• FID - First Input Delay (Does it respond quickly?)
• CLS - Cumulative Layout Shift (Is it visually stable?)
• INP - Interaction to Next Paint (a new metric set to replace FID)

In the "PageSpeed.ONE score," each metric carries this weight:

• LCP: 45%
• FID: 15%
• CLS: 25%
• INP: 15%

Why did we choose these weights? To some extent, we mirror the weights within the Lighthouse Score, another metric from Google. We've added the modern INP metric, which showcases JavaScript performance better than FID.

Interaction to Next Paint (INP)#

We intentionally included the new INP metric. While still considered experimental, Google has already announced a date for its inclusion in Core Web Vitals. Around March 2024, it will replace the now somewhat unsatisfactory FID (First Input Delay) metric.

This change will affect a wide range of websites because INP is a far more accurate and stringent metric. It's time to start considering the INP metric.

Most importantly, measurements on mobile are crucial because, according to our experience, 70–90% of e-shop traffic comes from mobile devices.

The Winner is Hornbach.cz#

The fastest e-shop is Hornbach.cz. It triumphed in the most crucial category of the Top 100 most visited websites on both mobile and desktop. It also consistently ranked in the top ten in the Top 500 category. We chose it as the winner because it is truly a complex and large e-shop.

Now, for inspiration, let's explore some well-executed technicalities that led to their victory in our study.

1. Perfect TTFB (Time To First Byte), backend speed
   The average time to load the first byte is 0.3 seconds. Google's recommendation is within 0.8 seconds, but for many Czech e-shops, this value exceeds one second. This advantage then reflects in other metrics.
2. Proper use of lazy loading
   Hornbach.cz employs native lazy loading for images, which is now widely supported by all major browsers. It's advisable to apply the loading=”lazy” attribute to all images on the page, except for the image that forms the LCP element. The image belonging to LCP should not have this attribute to ensure it loads as quickly as possible.
3. Properly structured and served CSS styles
   The website has perfectly prepared CSS groups, divided by page and component (header, footer, variables, etc.). As a result, styles that are unnecessary and not needed on the current page are not downloaded. CSS files are among the blocking resources and must be kept as small as possible. Styles for the footer are cleverly deferred and begin downloading only after the LCP image on the page starts loading.
4. Good work with images
   Images are well-optimized in terms of both data and physical size. The <picture> elements with correct srcsets and sizes are used. For the largest banner images on the homepage, the WebP format is used, which is widely supported today and recommended for all images on the web. SVGs are also properly minimized.
5. Proper text compression settings
   Even the best-optimized code is massive if text compression is not enabled and properly configured on the server. With compression, it's particularly important to choose and enable the correct level. Reliable Gzip compression is used on Hornbach.cz for HTML (level 5), CSS (7), JS (8), and SVG (9) files. Compression levels are correctly chosen with server performance in mind.

Where do we see opportunities for improvement at Hornbach's website? There are always a few:

1. Further prioritize the download of LCP elements using priority hints or preload.
2. More consistently use WebP and AVIF images.
3. Fully utilize lazy load for images; it's occasionally missing.
4. Unnecessarily complex serving of image variants (srcset and sizes).

In conclusion, what can we say? We don't know about you, but we're rather pleased with the study's results.

Congratulations to the winners, the creators of Hornbach.cz!

Special recognition goes to the creators of 3v1trivjednom.cz and t-shock.eu, the fastest among the top 500 websites on mobile and desktop.

It has been shown that even large e-shops, as well as those built on solutions like Shoptet, can be technically brilliant. They can be fast and bring conversions and satisfied users to operators.

Need help with your e-shop's speed? Get in touch.

Tags:PageSpeed.ONEWeb Performance