Press Room: 2003
Potentially Staggering Losses for Online Retailers According to Keynote
New E-Commerce Transaction Index Underscores Extent of Web Performance Problems
Shop.org, NEW YORK CITY — September 25, 2003 — Keynote Systems (Nasdaq: KEYN), The Internet Performance Authority®, today reported that the first six weeks of data from its new Keynote Consumer E-Commerce Transaction Index reveal important inconsistencies and weaknesses in transaction performance among the index members. Results from the index show dramatically varying Web transaction performance and response times leading to the failure, at times, of almost 30 percent of the transactions measured. (Note: editors can visit Keynote at Table #15 at Shop.org to discuss the latest results from the Keynote E-Commerce Transaction Index.)
With online retail sales last year totaling $93.1 billion as reported by the Dieringer Research Group and holiday online retail sales this year expected to increase to $20.4 billion from $12.6 billion last year according to Brand Keys research, lost or incomplete transactions can quickly add up to staggering losses for large retailers.
“In the dog eat dog retail space, a competitor is truly only a click away,” said Carol Carpenter, director of product management at Keynote. “If almost 30 out of 100 transactions fail, that could easily translate into tens of millions of dollars in lost revenue. Although retailers were quick to recognize the need to benchmark and monitor customer-facing Web-based applications from the end user perspective, today’s assessment dramatically underscores more than ever the need for retailers to closely manage and regularly load test the performance of their online channels, especially as the holidays approach.”
The Keynote E-commerce Transaction Index is the retail industry’s first and only Web transaction performance benchmark index that measures the response time and success rate for executing a typical six-page online retail transaction on 13 leading retail Web sites.
Eddie Bauer led the Index ranking for both response time and success rate five out of six weeks starting with the week of August 11 through the week of September 15. The worst performers on the index for response time and success rate ranged as low as 40.84 seconds and 71.75% respectively.
The following tables show summary data of the measured performance (in seconds) and availability rates for the weeks of September 8 and September 15 from Keynote’s new Consumer E-commerce Transaction Index. (The aggregate results from previous weeks can be found at http://www.keynote.com/solutions/performance_indices/ecommerce/ecommerce.html in The E-Commerce Times at http://www.ecommercetimes.com/.
Week of September 15, 2003
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Week of September 08, 2003
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How the Index Works
The Keynote Consumer
E-commerce Transaction Index, introduced in May, is composed of the
most active e-commerce sites on the Web, as determined by industry
experts and analyst reports, and is the only industry benchmark that
compares and contrasts the performance of a similar six-step Web
transaction by a consumer purchasing a similar item on each
site.
The 13 companies that make up the index include: Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN), Best Buy (NYSE: BBY), Costco (Nasdaq: COST), E-Bay (Nasdaq: EBAY), Eddie Bauer (OTC: SPGLA), JCPenney NYSE: JCP), LL Bean , Nordstrom (NYSE: JWN), Office Depot (NYSE: ODP), Office Max (NYSE: OMX), Sears (NYSE: S), Target (NYSE: TGT) and Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT). These companies receive a significant majority of their revenue from online sales and a high volume of Web site visitors flock to them every day to complete transactions similar to the ones being measured. As such they are the de facto benchmark against which retailers doing business on the Web should measure themselves.
The data used to create the index is taken from actual online retail transactions Keynote performs and is measured from 10 U.S. cities (Boston, San Francisco, Detroit, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Houston and 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 six steps (that may represent six or more pages in a retail transaction): accessing the home page, searching for a product, viewing the product, adding the product to a shopping cart, proceeding to check-out, logging in to an account for purchase.
Availability is the “success rate” for completing the entire transaction.
The Keynote Methodology
Keynote pioneered the
use of vertical indices and benchmarks for Web application
performance over four years ago.
The new Keynote Consumer E-Commerce Transaction Performance Index is the retail industry’s most accurate Web transaction performance benchmarking index for improving the performance of the retail industry’s most critical online transactions. 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.
About the Keynote Consumer E-commerce Transaction
Index
The Keynote Consumer E-Commerce Transaction Index
is the retail industry’s first and only Web transaction performance
benchmarking index for optimizing the experience of its online
customers.
The Keynote Consumer E-Commerce Transaction Index provides customers with a new and ideal method 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 sites.
Complete index data that includes every data point taken 24/7 along with drill-down error analysis and more, is available from Keynote by monthly subscription only.
The Index accurately measures the performance and availability of Web transactions that represent a typical consumer purchasing a popular product at the most active e-commerce sites on the Web today.
The companies selected for inclusion in the Consumer E-Commerce index were ranked in the top percentile of all e-commerce companies based on visitor traffic, online revenues and consumer interest. Each Web transaction measured is representative of the sequence of steps that a consumer would perform on each company’s Web site leading up to the purchase of a product or item. The product or item selected in the transaction represents a popular item that a consumer would purchase on that particular Web site. The number and type of steps that are measured in each transaction uses a consistent methodology, allowing for a direct comparison from one retailer to another in the same market.
What The Keynote Consumer E-Commerce Transaction Index
Measures
Each transaction is measured using the
following six components:
- Accessing the home page
- Searching for a product
- Viewing the product
- Adding the product to a shopping cart
- Proceeding to check-out
- Logging into an account for purchase
Keynote’s transaction methodology provides the most accurate view of end user experience by taking its measurements using the market leading browser coupled with the most comprehensive geographically distributed infrastructure of measurement computers and backbone representation.
Performance data of the sites measured by The Keynote Consumer E-Commerce Transaction Index is taken using Keynote’s Transaction Perspective® service from US10 agents. Each transaction is measured hourly.
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.
Availability and Pricing
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.
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. Other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Contacts:
Della Lowe, Keynote Systems, Inc.,
(650) 403-3233, dlowe@keynote.com
Dan Berkowitz, Keynote Systems, Inc., (650)
403-3305, dberkowitz@keynote.com
