Press Room: 2004

Diners Club the Leader in Speed and Reliability on Keynote’s New Credit Card Web Transaction Performance Index

• Nine Leading Credit Card Sites Kick-Off New Index; Diners Club Tops First Week’s Index with 100% Reliability
• Transaction Speeds Vary; Transaction Reliability More Consistent
• 13% of U.S. Consumers Now Pay Credit Card Bills Online
• New Index Adds to Keynote’s Existing Family of Financial Services Indices that Already Includes Online Broker and Banking Indices
• Keynote Customer Experience Rankings for Credit Card Sites also Available

SAN MATEO, Calif., — October 19, 2004 — Keynote Systems (Nasdaq “KEYN”), The Internet Performance Authority®, announced inaugural results of the world’s first e-business transaction index for the credit card industry. Known as “The Keynote Credit Card Web Transaction Performance Index,” the new index provides an excellent benchmark for transaction speed and reliability of leading credit card Web sites.

With the official launch of Keynote’s new credit card Web transaction index, Keynote has built a strong foundation of Web performance indices across the financial services market. Keynote already offers market-leading Web transaction indices for the online broker and banking industries. No other vendor offers three distinct Web transaction indices designed specifically to meet the needs of financial services organizations in these important and growing online categories.

Sites currently on the new index are bankone.com, capitalone.com, chase.com, citibank.com, dinersclubnorthamerica.com, discovercard.com, firstusa.com, mbna.com and providian.com.

The initial results from Keynote's Credit Card Transaction performance index showed a wide range of performance for some of the largest credit card issuers Web sites. Companies that issues credit cards have discovered the efficiencies that online access for their customers can bring to their operations - everything from checking available credit to viewing recent charges online allows the phone support to focus on more customer issues.

Speeds for checking the recent charges varied from around 7 seconds to over 20 seconds. Often times, these sites are slowed down while authenticating the user's credentials or doing the actual database queries for the recent charges. Those sites that can optimize the performance of these two critical processes would stand to gain in speed. The success rates for completing the task to check the recent charges are extremely close to each other with the top 5 sites being separated by less than one percent, indicating that most credit card issuers have a robust enough infrastructure that supports 24X7 access. The remaining sites could benefit greatly if they reviewed their infrastructure and implemented best practices that would increase the transaction reliability of their sites.

Here are inaugural results for The Keynote Credit Card Web Transaction Performance Index:

Increasing numbers of Americans are taking advantage of offerings by credit card providers to receive, view and pay credit card charges online. An April 2004 Yankee Group report found that 13% of U.S. consumers pay their credit card bills online and 14% receive and view their statements online. Therefore, it is increasingly important for e-business executives within credit card companies to understand, on a real time 24/7 basis, the overall health of their e-business infrastructure.

“As more people use credit cards to pay for goods and services online, the risk of other people gaining access to credit card information not their own and making unauthorized purchases online has also increased,” said Roopak Patel, senior Internet analyst in Keynote’s public services division. “Rather than wait for their monthly credit card statements, more people are going to the Web sites run by their credit card providers to make sure there have been no unauthorized charges during the month. And of course consumers are increasingly paying their credit card bills online. It is imperative that credit card companies have a deep understanding for the operational performance of their site so they can continually improve it. Our new index is designed to serve this need.”

The Keynote Credit Card Web Transaction Performance Index is the first of its kind to systematically measure the speed and reliability of leading credit card Web sites for performing common multi-step tasks. To create this particular index, Keynote’s measurement computers in 10 cities around the U.S. “click through” the same steps an actual person might perform: entering the particular URL of the credit card site they wish to visit, clicking on the login button, logging in using account information, selecting steps necessary for viewing “recent charges” and logging out of the site.

The Keynote Credit Card Web Transaction Performance Index will be published weekly on Keynote’s Web site at http://www.keynote.com/solutions/performance_indices/credit_card/credit_card.html.

Keynote has historically seen an improvement in overall performance results, over time, whenever it has launched a new vertical-based Web transaction performance index. The goal of the index is to help the credit card industry measure and manage the performance of its Web sites and optimize the experience of people receiving, viewing and paying credit card charges online.

The Keynote Credit Card Web Transaction Performance Index is designed to reflect the speed and reliability of the most well known credit card sites with a large online presence. Going beyond home page performance, the credit card transaction index will provide deep insight into the performance of these high traffic credit card Web sites.

In addition to transaction performance measurement, Keynote also provides detailed customer experience measurement services and reports for the credit card and banking industries. The Keynote Customer Experience (CE) Rankings are syndicated, competitive benchmarking studies of customer behavior across leading Web sites in specific vertical industries. The studies provide critical business insight into online customer experiences, industry trends and competitive web strategies. Keynote uses proprietary software and a panel of thousands of real consumers to gather the quantitative, qualitative and behavioral data that inform the reports. An overview of the most recent Keynote CE Rankings for the Credit Card Industry is available at: http://www.keynote.com/solutions/cem_sr_credit.html.

About Keynote’s Credit Card Web Transaction Performance Index

Keynote pioneered the use of vertical indices and benchmarks for e-business performance over five years ago. The data used to produce the index for a given week will be taken from actual online transactions Keynote’s automated measurement computers execute and measure from the ten largest U.S. metropolitan areas (Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Washington, D.C.) on an hourly basis Monday to Sunday from 8:00 a.m. to midnight eastern time.

Keynote transaction measurement computers are placed on the most widely used, familiar and recognizable Internet backbone and service providers in these cities. Keynote’s global network of measurement computers run standard Microsoft Internet Explorer browsers on Windows/2000 to obtain the most accurate and representative transaction performance data possible today.

For the Keynote Credit Card Web Transaction Performance Index, each of the measurements begin by launching the browser, selecting the starting URL for the specific Web site, and then conducting the following:

­ Clicking on the login button
­ Logging in using account information
­ Selecting the steps necessary for viewing “recent charges”
­ Logging out of the site

Complete index data that includes the aggregated and limited time-frame results and every data point taken 24/7 along with page, network component, content and error detail, will be available for purchase from Keynote on a subscription basis.

Background on Keynote’s Web Performance Indices

Keynote’s Web transaction indices leverage Keynote’s long history and experience developing Internet performance indices. Keynote launched the world’s first Web performance indices that assess page download performance (as opposed to transaction performance), known as The Keynote Business 40 Internet Performance Index (measurements over T1 and T3 connections) and The Keynote Consumer 40 Internet Performance Index (measurements over dial-up and broadband connections). Keynote also launched the world’s first transaction performance index, The Keynote Web Broker Trading Index. All today are considered the ‘gold standard’ for Web performance benchmarking.

In addition to The Keynote Credit Card Web Transaction Performance Index, 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), The Keynote News Media Transaction Performance Index and The Keynote E-Government Transaction Performance Index.

Customers can use Keynote’s growing line of industry-specific Web transaction indices to assess Web transaction performance against internal benchmarks and against competitors. Customers can then leverage Keynote’s additional monitoring, performance management, load, content and usability testing services to improve the overall performance of their e-business applications and infrastructure.

To build and maintain its growing line of Web performance indices, Keynote uses its unparalleled global infrastructure of over 1,600 strategically and statistically located measurement, testing and diagnostic computers representing Internet performance from 50 metropolitan areas worldwide.

Detailed information regarding the methodology behind Keynote’s Web performance indices can be found at: http://www.keynote.com/downloads/whitepapers/txn-methodology-document-110804.pdf.

General information about Keynote’s performance indices can be found at http://www.keynote.com/solutions/solutions_ps_index.html

About Keynote

Founded in 1995, Keynote Systems (Nasdaq “KEYN”), The Internet Performance Authority®, is the worldwide leader in e-business performance management services. Over 2,100 corporate IT departments and 19,000 individual subscribers rely on Keynote’s growing range of measurement and monitoring, service level and customer experience management services to improve e-business performance by reducing costs, improving customer satisfaction and increasing profitability.

Keynote is viewed as 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, the company’s market-leading Web performance indices for vertical markets and leading customer research that provides critical business insight into online customer experiences, industry trends and competitive Web strategies.

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