SAN MATEO, Calif., — December 4, 2003 — Keynote Systems (Nasdaq “KEYN”), The Internet Performance Authority®, reported today that according to The Keynote E-Commerce Transaction Performance Index, major online shopping sites took a severe performance beating the day after Thanksgiving, known as Black Friday, and the traditional kick-off for the holiday shopping season.
During peak shopping time on Black Friday (9:00 a.m. till noon, pacific time) the Index showed that consumers could only complete a transaction –defined as the Web site’s ability to allow a consumer to click through a number of pages and successfully make a purchase –80 percent of the time. That means that almost one in five transactions attempted to be completed on the major holiday shopping sites failed. Overall, Index results show that on Black Friday from 5:00 a.m. until 8:00 p.m. the average ‘success rate’ for completing a transaction was 89.1%.
As a means of comparison, the day before Thanksgiving the Index showed that the average success rate was 98.4%. Clearly, the sites were not adequately prepared to deal with the level of increase in online shopping activity experienced on Black Friday.
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 multi-step online retail transaction on 13 leading retail Web sites. The Index provides an excellent overall barometer for how successful leading online shopping sites are at providing customers an optimal quality of experience each and every time a customer goes to their Web site.
Studies have shown that a negative online shopping experience translates directly into lost revenue. Therefore, e-businesses must continually monitor “transaction quality” as experienced by actual end users.
“On the Friday after Thanksgiving several retail sites remained below 80% for the majority of the shopping hours. In effect, one out of five online visitors could not complete their transaction on the desired site. Performance stabilized on Saturday and Sunday as sites overcame the rush of Friday,” said Roopak Patel, senior analyst in Keynote’s Public Services group. “On Monday, as people headed back to work, the response times skyrocketed to as high as 65 seconds for particular sites (average response time is typically between 14 and 17 seconds) and success rates plunged for several sites to well below 80%.”
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,” Patel continued. “If almost 20 out of 100 transactions fail, that could easily translate into tens of millions of dollars in lost revenue. Today’s assessment dramatically underscores more than ever the need for retailers to measure and monitor transaction performance as experienced by end users.”
According to Acquity Group, an e-business consultancy, “A number of very large retailers have failed to re-invest in the Web channel and they are plagued with transactions that get dropped…with the lift of additional consumers coming online this season, it will be interesting to see if that lack of investment will be exposed.” It appears it has been.
Index results for the top performers and the worst average for the week of November 24 can be found at http://www.keynote.com/solutions/performance_indices/ecommerce/ecommerce.html. Complete results of the Index can be found on E-Commerce Times at http://www.ecommercetimes.com/ectpi/
Keynote will be reporting on online shopping performance through Christmas. If you would like to receive Keynote’s press releases on this topic, please send an email to press@keynote.com and specify your media affiliation.
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 with remotely based “measurement computers.” Transactions are initiated and 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.
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
Founded in 1995, Keynote Systems, Inc., (Nasdaq “KEYN”), The Internet Performance Authority®, is the worldwide leader in Web performance measurement and management services that improve the quality of e-business. Keynote’s services enable corporate enterprises to monitor, benchmark, test, diagnose and optimize their e-business systems both inside and outside the firewall. Approximately 2,200 corporate IT departments and 17,000 individual subscribers rely on the company's easy-to-use and cost-effective services to increase revenues and reduce downtime costs, without requiring additional complex and costly software implementations.
Keynote Systems, Inc. is headquartered in San Mateo, California and can be reached at www.keynote.com or by phone in the U.S. at 650-403-2400.
Keynote, The Internet Performance Authority and Perspective are registered trademarks of Keynote Systems, Inc. Other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. © 2003 Keynote Systems, Inc.
Public Relations Contacts:
Dan Berkowitz, Keynote Systems, Inc., (650) 403-3305, dberkowitz@keynote.com
Della Lowe, Keynote Systems, Inc., (650) 403-3233, dlowe@keynote.com