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Grand National bookies take a pasting in online race

Post-Aintree celebrations curtailed by poor web site performance – SciVisum research reveals

10 April, 2006 - The online performance of this year’s top ten Grand National bookies could put a dampener on Post-Aintree celebrations according to results published today, by web testing specialist SciVisum.

As Investors in Britain’s bookmakers breathed a sigh of relief as Numbersixvalverde prevented the joint favourites from romping home, saving them from a massive payout, consistent errors plaguing online sports betting web sites put a shadow of doubt on their financial performance in the online race.

SciVisum research showed that 7 out of 10 of the bookmaker’s web sites tested exceeded the industry average of 0.01 per cent for errors over the three week period leading up to the Grand National, with one web site effectively being out of the online race to capture betters for 6 hours in a week. During this period people were unable to login to place bets.

Out of the five leading High Street and five Pure Play brands tested, the BetDirect, William Hill and Skybet web sites were the best performers showing the least web site errors overall.

“With a total of more than £250m staked on the Grand National industry-wide, bookies can’t afford to have such a crippling performance online,” said Deri Jones, CEO, SciVisum. “The race showed the increasing status of the Grand National in the country's affections, which presents a massive financial opportunity to the online sports betting sites. There is so much riding today on web site performance, as bookies compete to win over online betters. “
“Looking at the SciVisum research, it is shocking that some bookies appear to have put in a three legged horse in the online race. Far from having a fast finish, most of the web sites tested slowed down considerably at the last hurdle on the day of the race when their performance counted the most. As investors in betting companies resume trading following the race they need to also consider how their bookies are faring online. Just as you wouldn’t back a horse that has had no training, web sites can’t withstand the pressure of an online sporting event without careful testing. It’s incredible that this is still being ignored by the industry”, added Jones.

Alarmingly, there was a definitive slow down of web site performance on the day of the Grand National itself, with one web site slowing down by more than 230 per cent. As gamblers rushed online to place last minute bets and get the results of the race on the day, the SciVisum research showed that overall the web sites peaked in user logins during 12.00pm and 8.00pm. Two web sites performed slightly faster on the day than they had done during the previous week – these were Ladbrokes and BlueSquare.

Although on average the High Street contenders had less web site errors than the Pure Plays tested during the research period, the Pure Plays won with least slowdown on speed of response time.

As a result of the research SciVisum made a number of broad recommendations to improve access to websites:

1. If your site experiences peaks at predictable times, then plan your load testing in advance so that the technical team has a chance to correct errors before a major event.

2. If your site experiences high peaks in demand around particular events put in place a stripped down, lightweight version of your site in advance. This can be quickly switched on to handle more users to support major events. To be effective the stripped-down site needs to have un-necessary content taken out, and not offer visitors all of the functionality of the full site.

3. If your peak-to-normal traffic ratio is more than 30 or 50 times, invest in additional hardware to cover peak periods. However, doubling your hardware will not always double your capacity handling so be sure to load test your systems with the extra hardware and see what you really gain.

4. Make sure that your site takes advantage of the ‘go faster’ features that are designed into all modern Web Browsers. Known as HTTP compression, and HTTP caching, these are often overlooked by web software designers. If you don’t take advantage of such features your site may be pushing 3 or 4 times the amount of data per page down to users and loading your systems for no real gain.

5. Make sure your system architects have carefully planned your “frying / baking” strategy. ‘Frying’ is when web pages are prepared there and then - i.e. every single user will trigger the page to be built from its components again. ‘Baking’, is where a page is prepared once, and then served to users without change for a period of time – e.g. for an hour, or for a day. Baking pages are delivered faster by the server, but you need to ensure that the data is kept up to date.

The SciVisum research was conducted during 18 March to 9 April inclusive and monitored the login User Journey across 10 of the UK’s top online sports betting sites at 15 min intervals. This included an analysis of page download speeds and web site errors.