Press Room: 2005

Holiday Shopping Online: Keynote Offers Media Access to Studies, Experts

Keynote Studies Offer Insight Into Customer Experience and Service Levels at Leading Retail Web Sites

SAN MATEO, Calif., — November 9, 2005 — As the online holiday shopping season approaches, Keynote Systems (Nasdaq: KEYN), The Internet Performance Authority®, has announced that it is offering media outlets extensive access to its competitive intelligence studies of the online retail industry, as well as access to its team of industry experts. Keynote will also be watching its market-leading Web performance index of leading retail Web sites closely for unexpected blips. As the holiday shopping season heats up, sites often slow down.

How prepared are online shopping sites for this year's expected customer onslaught? What are the best sites doing right this season? And what are some of the wrong things sites do to create unhappy online holiday shopping customers? Keynote data and pundits are available as a media resource to provide reporters covering this year's online holiday shopping season with valuable data and insights available nowhere else.

Keynote has conducted numerous competitive intelligence studies of the online retail industry, examining the performance of leading retail Web sites in terms of both the online customer experience and service levels. The company's customer experience studies include an examination of online brand appeal, customer service and the checkout process, as well as more than 250 other metrics, at leading retail Web sites. Keynote's service level studies benchmark site reliability and responsiveness, including load handling, outage hours and average page download times at leading retail sites.

In addition, the company offers the Keynote E-Commerce Web Transaction Performance Index, an index that tracks the speed and availability for executing transactions at leading e-commerce sites. The index shows the total execution time and success rate for logging into an account, searching for an item, adding it to the shopping cart and proceeding to checkout on selected Internet retail sites.

The company also offers studies of credit card, travel, airline, cruise, wireless and other industry Web sites. Keynote experts in online customer experience and service levels at online retail sites are available for comment and interview. A partial overview of recent relevant Keynote studies is provided below.

For Further Information, Contact:
Dan Berkowitz, Keynote, dberkowitz@keynote.com, (650) 403-3305

Della Lowe, Keynote, dlowe@keynote.com, (650) 403-3233

Dan Cahill, Roaring Communications, dcahill@roaringcommunications.com, (415) 552-3999

Sampling of Available Keynote Studies & Resources for Media:

• Keynote Customer Experience Rankings for Retail Web Sites:
  This study examined 2,000 consumers as they interacted with more than 20 leading retail Web sites, capturing more than 250 behavioral and attitudinal data points for each consumer. For a press release on this study, visit: http://www.keynote.com/news_events/releases_2005/05july07.html
  
  
• Keynote Service Level Rankings for Retail Web Sites:
  jkThis study examined service levels at more than a dozen leading retail Web sites and is based on over 6,500 measurements of site responsiveness and reliability taken from each site. For an abstract of this study, visit: http://www.keynote.com/sbl_forms/sl_retail.html
  
  
• Keynote Customer Experience Rankings for Computer Hardware Web Sites:
  This annual study of customer experience at computer hardware retailer sites is based on research with 2,000 customers as they interacted with 10 leading sites that offer computer hardware or peripherals. For a press release on this study, visit: http://www.keynote.com/news_events/releases_2005/05oct06.html
  
  
• Keynote E-Commerce Transaction Performance Index:
  In addition, the Keynote E-Commerce Transaction Performance Index is a weekly evaluation of service levels at leading e-commerce sites. The index shows the total execution time and success rate for logging into an account, searching for an item, adding it to the shopping cart, and proceeding to check out on selected Internet retail sites. The latest results from the index can be viewed at: http://ecommercetimes.com/ectpi/