SAN MATEO, Calif., — December 10, 2003 — Keynote Systems (Nasdaq “KEYN”), The Internet Performance Authority®, reported today that major online shopping sites continued to show performance problems as holiday shoppers tried to play high tech Santa Claus during the second full weekend of holiday shopping. The Keynote E-Commerce Transaction Performance Index dipped at times during the week to as low as 80% success rate, meaning that consumers could only complete eight out of ten transactions. The overall ‘success rate’ for the week, dipped to a six week low as well, coming in at 93.68 percent. A transaction is defined as the Web site’s ability to allow a consumer to click through a number of pages and successfully make a purchase.
Although several large retail sites presented performance problems during the entire past weekend (Friday, Saturday and Sunday), there were no discernable differences for measurements taken from Keynote computers located in the Northeast as shoppers stranded indoors by the blizzard hit the Web to shop. Several large sites had much greater fluctuation in performance as well as the success rate for completing online transactions. While Saturday numbers were relatively stable, Sunday's performance had much greater variability from site to site.
According to Forrester Research consumers are expected to spend $12.2 billion online this year in the Thanksgiving to Christmas period, up 42 percent from last year and about 75 percent of online sales are expected to go to “multi-channel” retailers- that is those with brick and mortar stores. If inclement weather is a factor in how many consumers are driven to the Web, a loss of up to 20 percent of all transactions could translate into enormous revenue losses.
“Although the East Coast storm over the weekend did not appear to impact Internet performance from that region, the fact that more shoppers were driven to the Web by the weather means that there is a potential for greater lost revenue if transactions fail,” said Roopak Patel, senior analyst in Keynote’s Public Services group. “Recent studies show that as many as 50 percent of consumers research gift purchases online before buying them through the store or store catalogue and 30 percent buy in-store at the same retailer whose Web site they used for research. That research, which is multi-page, also constitutes a transaction and poor performance of a Web site could also threaten revenue.”
During the week of December 1 the Index showed that consumers could only complete a transaction 93.68 percent of the time and response time came in at 14.6 seconds, slightly above the week of November 24, which included the heavy Thanksgiving shopping weekend.
As a means of comparison, the average success rate for the four weeks previous ranged from 94.49 percent to 96.68 percent.
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.
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:
Della Lowe, Keynote Systems, Inc., (650) 403-3233, dlowe@keynote.com
Dan Berkowitz, Keynote Systems, Inc., (650) 403-3305, dberkowitz@keynote.com