Costco's website performs below industry standards for modern e-commerce. Desktop page loads typically clock 4–7 seconds, while mobile can exceed 8–10 seconds depending on connection quality. For context, Amazon and Walmart consistently deliver sub-2-second loads on comparable hardware. The slowness stems from several compounding factors. Costco loads 40+ third-party scripts for analytics, advertising pixels, membership verification, and inventory systems that weren't built with front-end performance as a priority. Images frequently exceed 500KB without modern format compression (WebP, AVIF), and the site still relies on older JavaScript frameworks that block rendering. Their CDN configuration is functional but not aggressive, meaning assets aren't always served from geographically optimal nodes for Canadian users. Costco also prioritizes membership gate-keeping over speed. Every session validates your account status against warehouse inventory systems in real-time, adding latency that pure-play online retailers avoid. This architectural choice reflects their business model: the website exists to support existing members, not to acquire new traffic through organic search the way traditional e-commerce sites do. From an SEO perspective, this creates real ranking penalties. Google's Core Web Vitals heavily weight Largest Contentful Paint and Total Blocking Time, metrics where Costco consistently scores poorly. For a portfolio site we manage that competes in consumer goods, we've seen 15–22% traffic lifts simply by achieving sub-3-second loads and passing all Core Web Vitals thresholds. If you're benchmarking your own site, don't use Costco as a reference point. They succeed despite poor performance because of brand strength and membership lock-in. For businesses relying on organic discovery and conversion optimization, speed is non-negotiable. We typically target under 2.5 seconds for desktop, under 3.5 for mobile, with LCP under 2 seconds across the board. Anything slower measurably costs traffic and revenue in competitive verticals.