FORRESTER FINANCE FORUM, New York City — June 10, 2004 — Keynote Systems (Nasdaq “KEYN”), The Internet Performance Authority®, announced today the inaugural winners of the Keynote Performance Awards, a new awards program designed to honor, recognize and celebrate excellence in Web site performance. Keynote kicked off the new awards programs by honoring the fastest and most reliable Web sites in two vertical categories: online trading and online banking.
In online trading, E*TRADE FINANCIAL (NYSE: ET) is the winner of the Keynote Performance Awards for both Best Transaction Speed (avg. 4.17 seconds) and Best Transaction Reliability (avg. 99.55% reliability).
In online banking, SunTrust (NYSE: STI) is the winner of the Keynote Performance Award for Best Reliability (avg. 98.69 % reliability) and Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC) is the winner of the Keynote Performance Award for Best Transaction Speed (avg. 8.56 seconds).
The determination of the award-winning financial services companies is based entirely on the weekly aggregated results of two of Keynote’s seven market-leading Web transaction performance indices: The Keynote E-Banking Transaction Performance Index and the Keynote Web Broker Trading Index. Keynote’s transaction benchmark indices for the financial services industry are the only two of their kind and provide the ideal solution for understanding and improving the transaction experience from the end user perspective.
To determine the online banking awards, Keynote aggregated data from the E-Banking Transaction Performance Index collected between July 2003 and April 2004. For the online trading awards, Keynote aggregated data from the Web Broker Trading Index collected between March 2003 and April 2004.
In the coming months, Keynote will announce the fastest and most reliable sites for performing transactions on leading e-commerce and travel and hospitality sites.
“Congratulations to today’s winners of the first Keynote Performance Awards” said Arnold Waldstein, vice president of marketing and business development for Keynote. “In a complex and distributed e-business environment, maintaining optimal site speed and reliability 24/7 from the end user perspective, especially in light of increasing cyber attacks of all kinds, is daunting. E*TRADE FINANCIAL, SunTrust and Wells Fargo have every reason to feel proud. In addition to honoring the sites that have performed so well over time, the goal of our new awards program is to foster an environment of healthy competition among leading sites in a particular vertical and support the overall goal of Web site performance excellence.”
“We are thrilled and honored to be the winners of the Keynote Performance Awards in online trading,” said Joshua S. Levine, chief technology and administrative officer, E*TRADE FINANCIAL Corporation. “At E*TRADE FINANCIAL we strive to deliver the best online investing experience possible. To do so, we must be acutely aware of the quality, performance and accessibility of our Web site from the end user perspective.”
“As we continue to enhance our customers’ ability to interact with SunTrust through any channel, we are gratified that our focus on performance in our online banking channel has been recognized by a leading third-party such as Keynote,” said Will Kaser, senior vice president of Multi-Channel Banking Systems at SunTrust. “Reliability is a key measure we use to grade the customer experience, for online banking, branch banking, and telephone banking. Our ability to consistently deliver cross-channel services to our customers drives our success in the marketplace. Customers will continue to see this type of excellence from SunTrust.”
"As the nation's first and leading Internet bank, Wells Fargo is
committed to providing online services that are fast, easy and
secure," said George Cheng, senior vice president, Wells Fargo
Online. "We are honored to receive the Keynote award as the fastest
bank on the Web. This recognition
underscores our commitment to
providing consumers with industry-leading service anytime,
anywhere."
Background on The Keynote Performance
Awards
Enterprises spend hundreds of millions of dollars
each year and untold human effort and ingenuity building their Web
sites, keeping them up and running optimally 24/7 and hopefully
driving an increasing number of visitors to their Web sites. Online
performance is a critical factor for competing successfully in
today’s tough business environment and Keynote’s performance awards
are the first of their kind to encourage, recognize and honor the
efforts of the many people within an organization who work so hard
all year long to run a high performance Web site.
The Keynote Performance Awards are based on Keynote’s market-leading Web transaction performance indices in which Keynote specifies a common end-to-end business process or task that can be measured reliably and accurately at each of the sites selected for inclusion in a vertical transaction index. Speed and reliability measurements are taken on an hourly basis from the 10 largest metropolitan areas in the U.S.
Keynote’s growing line of transaction indices include: The Keynote Web Broker Trading Index, The Keynote E-Banking Transaction Performance Index, The Keynote E-Commerce Transaction Performance Index, The Keynote Travel & Hospitality Web Transaction Performance Index (includes leading airline, hotel and online travel agency Web sites) and The Keynote E-Government Transaction Performance Index.
Every week since 1997, Keynote has published results for one or more Web performance indices on its own Web site (http://www.keynote.com/solutions/solutions_pi_index.html) and on the sites and in the magazine pages of its publishing partners.
Keynote’s indices are recognized as benchmarks for understanding,
comparing and improving Web site performance from the all-important
end user perspective. They represent what a typical end user in the
U.S. would experience when going to a leading Web site in one of
these verticals to search for information or to make a
purchase.
For more information about Keynote’s Performance Awards
click:
http://www.keynote.com/news_events/performance_awards.html
Measurement Infrastructure
The foundation for
Keynote’s measurement and monitoring services and its indices are an
extensive network of over 1,600 measurement computers strategically
located in over 100 locations around the world and connected to the
major Internet backbones. These computers accurately represent the
performance that may be experienced by actual end users in over 50
metropolitan areas worldwide. Keynote’s sophisticated operations
center constantly monitors the health and security of these
computers. For more information on Keynote’s measurement
infrastructure
click:
http://www.keynote.com/keynote_method/keynote_method_methodology.html
How Keynote Determined The Winners
Keynote
aggregated its weekly transaction index data and determined the
fastest and most reliable Web site in each vertical category for a
discrete period of time. Two separate awards are announced in each
vertical category: one for “Fastest Web Site” and one for “Most
Reliable Web Site.”
Keynote uses discrete periods of time over which the data for the sites on the transaction indices are evaluated. In order to be considered, sites need to have published data for at least 90% of the weeks during the discrete time period. A straight arithmetic average is used to determine both “transaction speed” and “transaction reliability.” The site with the fastest time (in seconds) is recognized for the “speed” award and the site with the highest success rate (out of 100%) is recognized for the “reliability” award.
To read more about Keynote’s Web transaction indices and the methodology behind them click: http://www.keynote.com/downloads/whitepapers/webtxn-methodology052704.pdf
About Keynote
Founded in 1995, Keynote
Systems (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. Over 2,100 corporate IT departments and 19,625 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 is The Internet Performance Authority due to the company’s global infrastructure of over 1,600 measurement computers in more than 50 cities worldwide that capture and store on a daily basis over 40 million Internet performance measurements, frequent media citations quoting Keynote's Web performance data and analysis and the company’s growing range of market-leading Web performance indices for vertical markets http://www.keynote.com/solutions/solutions_pi_index.html
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 and The Internet Performance Authority are registered trademarks of Keynote Systems, Inc. Other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. © 2004 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, mailto:dlowe@keynote.com