In my last post, I described how end-user experience has evolved over time and how I advise clients to look at performance dimensions in a similar sequence:

1. Availability
2. Response Time
3. Consistency

This week, I decided to review our July Gomez/dotMobi Mobile Web Experience Banking Benchmark results and compare them to our longstanding US Retail Banking Benchmark results  from the traditional web.

Initially, I was struck (figuratively) by the similarities between the two benchmarks – mobile and fixed web – when comparing the averages for Availability, Response Time, and Consistency. For example, the banks in both benchmarks regularly provided more than 99.5% Availability for the month. Even in terms of Response Time average, the fixed web and mobile web came in at 3.38 seconds and 4.30 seconds, respectively.

For some, these comparable results may be more surprising than a Patrick Duffy dream sequence.

Before we rush to judge the results from the fixed web and mobile web to be “essentially the same”, let’s make another quick comparison. The range of fixed web Response Times is substantially greater than that found on the mobile web. Said differently, Gomez found that in July the slowest mobile banking website was 50% slower than the fastest while the difference between the tortoise and the hare was 1000% for the fixed web.

I offer up three potential reasons for this difference in the observed ranges of response times:

1. Mobile web applications are generally lighter than their fixed web counterparts. More homogeneity in mobile page sizes may be influencing the response time results.
2. Most of our mobile banking benchmark participants are top performers in our fixed web benchmark. These top performing banks “get” web performance (fixed and mobile) and have made investments to get it right.
3. Mobile web optimization techniques aren’t as prevalent as those in the fixed web. This might have the impact of keeping mobile website experiences more similar than different – a phenomenon that is definitely not in force on the fixed web where differences between the haves and have nots are both dangerous and common.

It’s critically important that we keep our eye on mobile banking web experiences. For their part, IDC Financial Insights is predicting  “imminent” and substantial growth for mobile banking. In a rush to launch mobile web offerings, let’s hope that banks can keep up with end-user experience expectations. This includes the full gamut of expectations – from Availability to Response Time to Consistency.

Let me know if you have any questions about the current and future state of performance on the mobile web, from banking to search to social networking to whatever. I’d also encourage you to pop on over to visit our friends at dotMobi.

Every day, more and more people are using their smartphones and other mobile web-based devices in new and powerful ways. Let’s work together to make sure that we stand ready to serve them.