SAN MATEO, Calif., — August 6, 2003 — Keynote Systems (Nasdaq: KEYN), The Internet Performance Authority®, today announced two week’s worth of results for its new e-banking transaction performance index that measures the performance and availability for performing a typical online bank transaction on eight leading U.S. bank sites as measured from 10 major metropolitan areas. The results are startling and show that commercial banks deliver widely varying performance and relatively slow response times to customers using the Internet to execute common online bank transactions such as logging on to and checking an account balance.
Leading the pack the weeks of 7/21 and 7/28 in average time to execute the transaction was Chase and Wells Fargo in the number one and two spot respectively. During the week of 7/21 and 7/28 Chase Bank’s average response time was 8.16 seconds and 8.29 seconds respectively. Wells Fargo’s execution speed averaged 8.58 seconds and 9.48 seconds respectively. Washington Mutual ranked eighth on Keynote’s e-banking transaction index both weeks at 23.09 seconds and 23.44 seconds respectively. The e-banking index average for performance was 12.43 seconds the week of July 21. For the week of July 28 the index was 12.39 seconds.
Chase Bank held the number one spot in availability at 99.66 percent the week of 7/21. The week of 7/28 US Bank held the number one spot in availability at 99.91 percent. Wells Fargo was in the number two spot in availability the week of 7/21 at 99.46 percent. Chase Bank was number two in availability the week of 7/28 at 99.84 percent. Washington Mutual was eighth in availability both weeks at 92.37 percent and 89.07 percent respectively. The e-banking index average for availability was 97.76 percent the week of July 21. For the week of July 28 the index was 97.10 percent.
The eight banks included on Keynote’s e-banking transaction performance index are Bank of America (NYSE: BAC), Chase (NYSE: JPM), Fleet Bank (NYSE: FBF), SunTrust (NYSE: STI), US Bank (NYSE: USB), Wachovia (NYSE: WB), Washington Mutual (NYSE: WM) and Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC).
The data used to produce the index was taken from actual online bank transactions Keynote’s automated measurement computers executed and measured from the 10 U.S. cities (Boston, San Francisco, Detroit, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Houston, Dallas) on an hourly basis Monday to Sunday from 5:00 AM to 9:00 PM pacific time.
Performance (or “response time”) is defined as the aggregate time in seconds it took during the week to complete a multi-step transaction from the 10 U.S. cities. A transaction consists of four components (that may represent four or more pages in a banking transaction): accessing the home page, logging into the bank account, checking the account balance, logging out of the account.
Availability is the “success rate” for completing the entire transaction.
Here is the summary data for the first two week’s worth of results from Keynote’s new e-Banking Transaction Performance Index—
Week of July 21-27, 2003, 5:00 AM to 9:00 PM Pacific Time
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Week of July 28-August 3, 2003, 5:00 AM to 9:00 PM Pacific Time
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E-Banking Customers Less Satisfied
The speed with
which a consumer can perform an online banking transaction is directly related
to customer satisfaction. However, according to the Summer 2003 study by ForeSee
Results and Forbes.com, online banking registered a score of 73 on the American
Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI 100-point scale) Comparatively, retail and
commercial banks each scored a point higher at 74, and online retail topped the
index at 83.
“While online retailers are finally figuring it out and starting to get profitable, banks are asleep at the wheel. Not only are banks losing an opportunity to sell more services to current customers online, they are making it more difficult for themselves to attract new customer to their most profitable channel,” said Larry Freed, CEO of ForeSee. “Despite the recent growth in online banking, if it were even close to meeting expectations, you would see higher satisfaction scores for Web banking than traditional banking. The Web is supposed to do a better job of conveniently meeting people’s needs. There’s still a long way to go if online banking really expects to outpace other channels. The sooner banks learn to measure and manage customer satisfaction on their own Web sites, the faster the benefits will accrue.”
About Keynote’s e-Banking Transaction Performance
Index
Keynote pioneered the use of vertical indices and
benchmarks for Web application performance over four years ago.
The new Keynote e-Banking Transaction Performance Index is the banking industry’s most accurate Web transaction performance benchmarking index for improving the performance of a bank’s most critical online banking services. Keynote measures transactions from all the major metropolitan areas in the United States and places its transaction measurement computers on the most widely used, familiar and recognizable Internet backbone and service providers in the United States including Uunet/Worldcom, Sprint, AT&T and Qwest.
Additionally, Keynote’s global network of measurement computers run standard Microsoft Internet Explorer browsers on Windows/2000 to obtain the most accurate and representative transaction performance data possible in the banking industry today. It does not use an “emulator browser” as used by some vendors for obtaining similar-type index data.
For the first time financial institutions doing business on the Web have access to a useful and cost-effective benchmarking tool that provides real time, 24/7 visibility into the performance of their most critical online transactions. The e-banking index allows banks to meet internal Web performance objectives and to compare and contrast their online performance to online banking competitors.
Keynote’s e-Banking Transaction Index provides a competitive advantage for companies engaged in the fiercely competitive online banking industry. Banks now have a window on their own performance and can draw direct comparisons against competitors using the same steps any customer would click through on their site from beginning to end.
Poor transactional performance can drive customers right into the hands of competitors. To combat this, those engaged in e-banking need to be absolutely certain that the data they receive about performance is not only accurate, timely and delivered from multiple locations around the globe, but also specific to the banking industry.
How Banks Can Use the E-Banking Transaction Performance
Index
The Keynote e-Banking Transaction Performance Index
provides customers with a new and ideal benchmark for evaluating and improving
Web transaction performance relative to direct competitors in their market
space, rather than simply to a cross-section of general business Web sites. The
index includes leading U.S.-based banks based on the number of registered online
banking customers offering online banking capabilities to their customers.
The aggregated results from Keynote’s e-Banking Transaction Performance Index will be published regularly on Keynote’s Web site at http://www.keynote.com/.
Complete index data that includes not only the aggregated and limited time-frame results as published here, but every data point taken 24/7 along with page, network component, content and error detail is available from Keynote on a subscription basis for $3,495.00 per month.
Background on Keynote’s Web Performance Indices
Keynote’s
Web transaction indices leverage Keynote’s long history and experience
developing Internet performance indices. Keynote launched the world’s first Web
performance indices that assess page download performance (as opposed to
transaction performance). Known as The Keynote Business 40 Internet Performance
Index (measurements over T1 and T3 connections) and The Keynote Consumer 40
Internet Performance Index (measurements over dial-up and broadband
connections), Keynote also launched the world’s first transaction performance
index, The Keynote Broker Transaction Index. All today are considered the ‘gold
standard’ for Web performance benchmarking.
Now customers can use Keynote’s growing line of industry-specific Web transaction indices to assess Web transaction performance against internal benchmarks and against competitors. Customers can then leverage Keynote’s additional monitoring, performance management, load, content and usability testing services to improve the overall performance of their e-business applications and infrastructure.
To build and maintain its growing line of Web performance indices, Keynote uses its unparalleled global infrastructure of over 1,500 strategically and statistically located measurement, testing and diagnostic computers representing Internet performance from 50 metropolitan areas worldwide.
Information about all Keynote performance indices can be found at http://www.keynote.com/solutions/solutions_pm_performance_indices_tpl.html.
About Keynote
Keynote Systems (Nasdaq: KEYN), The
Internet Performance Authority®, is the global leader in Internet performance
management and testing services that improve the quality of e-business.
Keynote’s services enable corporate enterprises to benchmark, diagnose, test and
manage their e-business systems both inside and outside the firewall.
Approximately 2,300 corporate IT departments and 15,400 individual subscribers
rely on the company’s easy-to-use and cost-effective services to optimize
revenues and reduce downtime costs without requiring additional complex and
costly software implementations.
Keynote Systems, Inc. was founded in 1995 and is headquartered in San Mateo, California. The company can be reached at http://www.keynote.com/ or by phone in the U.S. at 650-403-2400.
© 2003 Keynote Systems, Inc. Keynote and The Internet Performance Authority are registered trademarks of Keynote. Other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Contact:
Dan Berkowitz, Keynote Systems, Inc., (650)
403-3305, dberkowitz@keynote.com