SAN MATEO, Calif., — February 18, 2004 — Some retailers are real speed demons when it comes to response times for their Web site transactions, according to Keynote Systems (Nasdaq: KEYN), the Internet Performance Authority®, which today announced aggregate results for the first six months of Keynote’s E-Commerce Web Transaction Performance Index, the retail industry’s first and only Web transaction performance benchmark index. The results show generally good response times for most major retailers, but some etailers are real standouts — consistently speedy for consumers performing transactions on their Web sites.
The five top performers in response time during the six-month period beginning the week of August, 4 2003 and ending the week of February 2, 2004 are Eddie Bauer (http://www.eddiebauer.com/), J.C. Penney (http://www.jcpenney.com/), Office Depot (http://www.officedepot.com/), Target (http://www.target.com/) and Wal-Mart (http://www.walmart.com/) with average response times of 11.74 seconds over the six-month period when Keynote began reporting results from the Index until now. 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.
As a means of comparison, the slowest sites on the Index had average response times as high as 37.00 seconds over the six-month period.
According to eMarketer 73 percent of US Internet users, ages 14 and over or 101.7 million Americans shop online and eMarketer expects that number to grow to 121.1 million within two years. That is they research products and services online that they are considering for purchase and may make their final purchase online.
“When you are doing business in the highly competitive retail space, the quality of the customer’s experience really matters,” said Arnold Waldstein, vice president for marketing and business development at Keynote. “The overall growth figures for online retailing make it abundantly clear that the Internet is being rapidly adopted by consumers who expect it to be as user friendly and available as any other appliance in their homes and offices. Retailers must pay attention to providing a high quality of customer experience if they want to succeed in using that channel and fast response time is one important component of that experience.”
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 11 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/
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 11 companies that make up the index include: Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN), Best Buy (NYSE: BBY), Costco (Nasdaq: COST), Eddie Bauer (OTC: SPGLA), J.C. Penney (NYSE: JCP), LL Bean, Office Depot (NYSE: ODP), Office Max (NYSE: OMX), Sears (NYSE: S), Target (NYSE: TGT) and Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT). These companies receive significant revenues 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 http://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. © 2004 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