Why is the Paypal website so slow?

[ScirraTom]

Hi there,

New to this forum.  I'm a web developer for Scirra.com

We sell mainly via Paypal.  Logging into Paypal, searching for transactions, the entire experience is frustratingly slow.

Why is the website so slow, and what are the plans to fix it?  If it continues to be as slow as it is we're happy to find a faster service.

Here's a breakdown of normal times I observe logging in and finding a transaction:

Paypal homepage: 3.5 seconds
Login page: 11 seconds
Processing login: 7 seconds
Getting to homepage: 12 seconds
Click history: 14.5 seconds
Click find a transaction: 4 seconds
Find a transaction on email: 11.5 seconds

I would expect a website like this to load under a few seconds per page.  Clicking the history button and it taking nearly 15 seconds is unusually poor performance.  I'm not even sure how you could write the history page to take that long to load.

[fmu]

I have been using it for 3 years regularly for small business purposes and it is truly slow when logging in, viewing the main screen, opening transactions, printing packing slips, and creating shipping labels, updating inventory, generating reports, basically everything.   For the last 3 years it has always been slow - I just count on it being slow. 

I know its going to be slow so I usually plan to do other activities while I keep paypal chugging on its slow stuff.  Check my email between clicks, go to USPS to schedule pickup (which is a faster site), transact on other web sites while I wait.  Bring a book.  Kind of like at the laundromat...

If I have a bunch of transactions I've found that opening a new browser tab for each and keeping the tabs fed round-robin:

open transaction 1 in tab 1, open transaction 2 in tab 2, open transaction 3 in tab 3...

go back to tab 1 and click open packing slip, go to tab 2 and click open packing slip, go to tab 3 and click open packing slip...

go back to tab 1 click print, go back to tab 2 click print, go back to tab 3 click print...

you get the idea, again, like at the laundromat....

- I wonder what their UX designers would say about this great use case...  but its the only way for me to get my stuff done without going bonkers.

[IchoTolot1970]

Will Paypal staff finally stop blaming our browsers, computers and connections? It's your database, full-stop. Hire someone who knows about databases. Not only are you ripping us merchants off with your rates, you are also wasting our valuable time and you are annoying our customers. Look at Amazon, they are ten times as big as you are and their web site is not slow. Look at everything Google does, it's darn fast. They are laughing at you!