HTTP Archive published 12 chapters of its annual Web Almanac, revealing disparities between mobile and desktop web performance.
The Almanac analyzes data from millions of sites to track trends in web technologies, performance metrics, and user experience.
This year’s Almanac details changes in technology adoption patterns that will impact businesses and users.
Key Highlights
Mobile Performance Gap
The most significant finding centers on the growing performance gap between desktop and mobile experiences.
With the introduction of Google’s new Core Web Vital metric, Interaction to Next Paint (INP), the gap has become wider than ever.
“Web performance is tied to what devices and networks people can afford,” the report notes, highlighting the socioeconomic implications of this growing divide.
The data shows that while desktop performance remains strong, mobile users—particularly those with lower-end devices—face challenges:
Desktop sites achieve 97% “good” INP scores
Mobile sites lag at 74% “good” INP scores
Mobile median Total Blocking Time is 18 times higher than desktop
Third-Party Tracking
The report found that tracking remains pervasive across the web.
“We find that 61% of cookies are set in a third-party context,” the report states, noting that these cookies can be used for cross-site tracking and targeted advertising.
Key privacy findings include:
Google’s DoubleClick sets cookies on 44% of top websites
Only 6% of third-party cookies use partitioning for privacy protection
11% of first-party cookies have SameSite set to None, potentially enabling tracking
CMS Market Share
In the content management space, WordPress continues its dominance, with the report stating:
“Of the over 16 million mobile sites in this year’s crawl, WordPress is used by 5.7 millions sites for a total of 36% of sites.”
However, among the top 1,000 most-visited websites, only 8% use identifiable CMS platforms, suggesting larger organizations opt for custom solutions.
In the ecommerce sector, WooCommerce leads with 38% market share, followed by Shopify at 18%.
The report found that “OpenCart is the last of the 362 detected shop systems that manage to secure a share above 1% of the market.”
PayPal remains most detected payment method (3.5% of sites), followed by Apple Pay and Shop Pay.