SAN MATEO, Calif., — December 17, 2003 — Keynote Systems (Nasdaq “KEYN”), The Internet Performance Authority®, reported today that major online shopping sites continue to under-perform and display inconsistent response times and success rates for holiday shoppers trying to complete transactions. This week Keynote analysts observed an ongoing cyclical pattern of performance degradation at the beginning of the workday with performance improving as the day wears on.
The overall Index ‘success rate’ for the week, however, improved from last week’s six week low, coming in at 95.98 percent availability, but transactions on the worst performing site still failed almost 14 out of every 100 times the transaction was attempted. A transaction is defined as a Web site’s ability to allow a consumer to click through a number of pages and successfully make a purchase.
Results from the Atlas Institute's third-annual holiday shopping study, released in November, reveal that the online holiday shopping season peaks approximately 10-to-14 days before Christmas. According to Young-Bean Song, director of the Atlas Institute, “there is no better time than the holiday season to take advantage of the unique strengths of online marketing.” If the Atlas study proves true, increased volume over the next week could create an even tougher environment ahead if retailers have not tested and optimized their Web sites for a large capacity of shoppers.
Online consumers spent $8.5 billion in November holiday shopping, up a whopping 55 percent from the year-ago period, according to a study released last week by Goldman Sachs & Co., Harris Interactive and Nielsen//NetRatings. Apparel, accounted for $1.6 billion in purchases, up 33 percent from November 2002, toys and video games, both hardware and software, for $875 million up 32 percent books for at $761 million, up 61 percent, videos and DVDs for $758 million, up 133 percent, and music at $402 million rose 57 percent year-over-year
“Taking advantage of the strengths of online marketing, however, can result in disaster if your Web site is not prepared to handle the volume a marketing campaign engenders. The figures released by Goldman Sachs demonstrate inescapably that the Internet has become part of the fabric of our lives and as much attention must be paid to the online customer experience as is paid to the in store customer,” said Roopak Patel, senior analyst in Keynote’s Public Services group. “Whether a customer buys online or just does research, the multi-page transaction must work in order to assure customer loyalty and revenue goals.”
During the week of December 8 the Index showed that consumers could complete a transaction 95.98 percent of the time. Response time came in at 15.03 seconds above the last two weeks, but still slower by several seconds than the weeks of October 27 through November 17.
As a means of comparison, the average response time for those four weeks previous ranged from 16.94 seconds to 17.67 seconds.
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 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