State of mobile-first eCommerce Report is a comprehensive comparison of 11,000 online stores worldwide. Along with our partner, Shoprank, we used the Lighthouse test to check what the PWA condition for the biggest market players is.

1. Comparison of 11K Online Stores
Using Lighthouse Test
STATE OF
MOBILE-FIRST
ECOMMERCE

2. STATE OF MOBILE-FIRST ECOMMERCE
Today, the Internet is mobile. It’s
no surprise with over 2.5 billion
smartphones used worldwide and
17 exabytes of data downloaded by
mobile devices each month.
Introduction
Number of smartphones users
worldwide from 2014 to 2020
(in billions)
3.0
2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020
2.0
1.0
2.5
1.5
0.5
0
1.57
1.86
2.1
2.32
2.53
2.71
2.87
Global data traffic from
2016 to 2021 (in exabytes
per month)
2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021
50
30
10
40
20
7
11
17
24
35
49
2

3. STATE OF MOBILE-FIRST ECOMMERCE
According to eMarketer estimates, retail
eCommerce sales reached $2.3 trillion in
2017, a 23.2% increase over the previous
year. The mobile share of this stood
at 58.9%, or $1.4 trillion. Surprisingly,
not all companies are aware of these
changes and not all of them react in the
right way.
As we believe that PWA is one of the
answers to the mobile-first revolution,
we decided to create a report about
the condition of PWA, performance
and other factors affecting the biggest
eCommerce shops around the world.
In 2021, mobile
eCommerce could rake
in some $3.5 trillion and
then make up almost
three quarters (72.9%)
of eCommerce sales.
3

4. One of the most important factors that
Lighthouse examines is a company’s
PWA. But what exactly is a PWA?
First, let’s take a look at the definition
created by Google:
Progressive Web Apps (PWA) are user
experiences that have the reach of the web,
and are:
• Reliable – Load instantly and never
show the downasaur, even in uncertain
network conditions.
• Fast – Respond quickly to user
interactions with silky smooth
animations and no janky scrolling.
• Engaging – Feel like a natural app on
the device, with an immersive user
experience.
This new level of quality allows Progressive
Web Apps to earn a place on the user’s
home screen.
So, a PWA is a web application based
on standard web technologies with
the addition of the newest JavaScript
features that make you feel as though
you’re using a native Android or iOS app.
PWA applications save downloaded files
and data on the user’s device in a cache.
Thanks to this, the data is delivered
immediately from the user’s device on
subsequent queries no matter how fast
your Internet connection is (or even
whether you have it or not). It’s possible
thanks to a service worker, which is a kind
of gate between our application and the
server. When it detects the page or data
is already saved in the device’s cache,
it delivers the data to the user directly
from the cache and, in the meantime,
synchronizes it with the server data.
PWA engages as native apps – they
are installable, attract users with push
notifications and offer an immersive full-
screen experience. This last feature is
possible thanks to the so-called Web App
Manifest – a simple JSON file that tells the
browser about your web application and
how it should behave when it is ‘installed’
on the user’s mobile device or desktop.
What exactly is a PWA?
4
STATE OF MOBILE-FIRST ECOMMERCE

5. STATE OF MOBILE-FIRST ECOMMERCE
What are the
advantages
of PWA?
• Discoverability – content in
Progressive Web Apps can easily be
found by search engines. It brings
new possibilities for content-centric
companies that run native apps.
When you use a PWA, your content
will be shown in the search engine
results.
• Linkability – any page or screen of
your app has a direct link that can
be shared easily.
• Bookmarkability – you can save
that link to access the app directly.
• Fresh and up-to-date – there’s no
need to go through the app store
approval process to push updates;
what’s more, native apps are usually
updated only via a wifi connection –
PWA are always up-to-date.
• Data saving – this is especially
important if your business is
present in markets where internet
access is slow or expensive.
5

6. Increase
mobile revenue
by 20%
One app across all
browsers and platforms
Save up to 75% on
development costs
No App Store
submissions or rejections
Ready to launch in
just 60 days
Always up-to-date with
the latest version
Easy to integrate through
API, no IT risk
SCHEDULE A DEMO

7. STATE OF MOBILE-FIRST ECOMMERCE
Our research
We’ve examined 11k of the most popular
eCommerce websites in the world using
the Lighthouse tool from Google.
Lighthouse is an open-source,
automated tool for improving the
performance, quality, and correctness of
a web app.
The entire test was conducted by our
partner - ShopRank using open-source
and publicly available technologies
such as https://github.com/digestoo/
Lighthouse-api.
We also used the most standard
configuration for this purpose which
was provided by the library created
by Google (https://github.com/
GoogleChrome/Lighthouse).
Data processing took place on a
DigitalOcean server with 8 GB RAM and
4 vCPUs. The server was in Germany.
When auditing a page, Lighthouse runs
a barrage of tests against the page, and
then generates a report on how well the
page did. From here you can use the
failing tests as indicators on what you can
do to improve your app.
The Lighthouse report focuses on 5
different areas: PWA, Best practices,
Performance, SEO, and Accessibility.
Below, you’ll find what factors are taken
into consideration when analyzing the
website.
The data has been subjected to statistical
analysis to verify their diversity in terms
of country, technology and industry.
7

8. High quality data about
eCommerce market.
ShopRank.co aggregates information from over 1.4 millions
of eCommerces and exposes them by simple list
with various filters and search engine
to let you find only these
companies which are
interesting for you. Service
is gathering data about
eCommerces traffic,
technologies, product
categories, couriers
and many others. You
can export to CSV or
integrate with your CRM.
If your clients are mainly
eShops or you want
to learn more about
eCommerce market,
you should visit
ShopRank.co, many of
the features are available
for free.
CHECK SHOPRANK WEBSITE

9. Countries
Although the Chinese eCommerce
Market is the first in the world (600 000
mln USD), as you can observe, China isn’t
one of the top countries. The reason for
that is eCommerce shops in China are
gathered mainly on big marketplaces,
including TaoBao, Alibaba or Tmall.
It makes the Chinese eCommerce
landscape more centralized.
Countries with the biggest number
of eCommerce stores in our sample:
Number of eShops per country
Review of investigated stores
United States
Germany
Russia
United Kingdom
France
Italy
1544
657
757
503
696
325
* No data - eCommerce shops for which we had difficulty
determining the country of origin.
Australia
Brazil
Canada
Czech Republic
France
Germany
India
Italy
Japan
Netherlands
Poland
Russia
Spain
Sweden
Ukraine
United Kingdom
United States
Others
No data
0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000
154
178
109
113
757
166
325
102
138
280
696
321
118
124
657
1544
780
2935
503
9
STATE OF MOBILE-FIRST ECOMMERCE

10. STATE OF MOBILE-FIRST ECOMMERCE
Industries
The most popular industries were
clothing, consumer electronics, home
and garden, recreation and sports.
Number of eShops per Industry
* No data - eCommerce shops for which we had
difficulty determining the industry.
antiques, collectibles
art and crafts
children
clothing
consumer electronics
entertainment
flowers and gifts
food
health and beauty
home and garden
jewellery and watch
music and film
office
pets
publications
recreation and sport
tools
toys and games
vehicle
no data
0 500 1000 1500 2000
93
245
141
1668
1532
65
200
420
874
1398
242
167
117
88
299
1222
180
209
363
1477
10

11. STATE OF MOBILE-FIRST ECOMMERCE
Visitors
We’ve examined 11K of the most
popular eCommerce websites in the
world using the Lighthouse tool from
Google.
This is how many monthly
visitors the smallest shop
from the analyzed list had.
This is how many visitors
the biggest shop from the
analyzed list had.
The average number of
visitors from the analyzed
companies.
251K
7,358M
3M
11

12. STATE OF MOBILE-FIRST ECOMMERCE
Review of
Lighthouse
Scores
In this part, we focus on the condition
of the analyzed eCommerce shops
(11,000) with regard to each Lighthouse
Test criteria (Performance, PWA,
Accessibility, SEO and Best Practices).
The eCommerce shops were scored
on a scale of 100 points - the higher
number means better result.
Every criterion is shown on a diagram
that represents the number of
eCommerce shops (Frequency) that
scored within a particular range of
points (0-10, 10-20, 20-30 and so on).
12

13. 13
Performance
Factors
Performance refers to the speed with which
web pages are downloaded and displayed
on the user’s web browser. During
performance analysis, Lighthouse scores
such elements as images, JavaScripts and
CSS.
• Critical Request Chains
• Defer unused CSS
• Enable Text Compression
• Estimated Input Latency
• First Contentful Paint
• First Interactive
• First Meaningful Paint
• Avoids Enormous Network Payloads
• Has multiple page redirects
• JavaScript Bootup Time Is Too High
• Keep Server Response Times Low
• Minify CSS
• Offscreen Images
• Optimize Images
• Properly Size Images
• Perceptual Speed Index
• Preload key requests
• Render-Blocking Resources
• Serve Images in Next-Gen Formats
• Time to Interactive
• Unoptimized Images
• User Timing Marks and Measures
• Uses An Excessive DOM Size
• Uses inefficient cache policy on static
assets
Performance isn’t the strong suit of the analyzed eCommerce shops. The average score for
the analyzed shops is just 35.66.
The most frequent score is between 10-30 - 36% of companies. The greatest number of
eCommerce shops (73% of all platforms) scored less that 50.
The research has also shown a strong correlation between PWA and Performance score.
A bigger score for PWA was connected to a higher score for Performance.
Performance distribution by frequency
2000
1000
Performance
Frequency
0
0-10
10-20
20-30
30-40
40-50
50-60
60-70
70-80
80-90
90-100
100
1461
1981 1985
1523
1176
893
663
476
351 314
177
Performance
- average score
35.66
STATE OF MOBILE-FIRST ECOMMERCE

14. 14
Accessibility
Factors
During the accessibility test, Lighthouse
controls whether websites and web
tools are properly designed and coded
for people with disabilities to use them.
It focuses on such aspects as properly
labeled elements.
• Buttons Have An Accessible Name
• Document Doesn’t Have A Title
Element
• Element aria-* Attributes Are
Allowed For This Role
• Element ARIA Attributes Are Valid
And Not Misspelled Or Non-Existent
• Element aria-* Attributes Have Valid
Values
• Elements With ARIA Roles Have
The Required aria-* Attributes
• Every Form Element Has A Label
• Every Image Element Has An alt
Attribute
• No Element Has a tabindex
Attribute Greater Than 0
As we can see from the chart, majority of scores for Accessibility is clustered around the
middle of the scale. The average rank is 58.34.
The biggest group of eCommerce shops (27%) scored between 50-60 and is followed
by 25% of all eCommerce shops, which scored 60-70. Only 7.77% of eCommerce shops
achieved 80 points or more.
Accessibility distribution by frequency
Accessibility
- average score
58.34
2000
3000
1000
Accessibility Rank
Frequency
0
0-10
10-20
20-30
30-40
40-50
50-60
60-70
70-80
80-90
90-100
100
21
186
749
1975
2985
2769
1439
617
190
4821
STATE OF MOBILE-FIRST ECOMMERCE

15. If you want to know more
about PWA, contact us!
DOWNLOAD FULL REPORT