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February
16, 2005
PRESS RELEASE
Online Retail Competition Heating Up as Consumers
Become Savvier on the Web, Says Keynote
- Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble and Circuit
City Top Keynote Rankings for Retail
- Specialty Apparel
Sites Deliver Best Online Shopping Experience
- Office
Supply Sites Closely Competitive
SAN MATEO, Calif., — February 16, 2005 — The
competition among online retailers is getting more
intense as consumers become savvier about online shopping,
and increasingly judge retailers based on their experiences
across the Web, according to a study. The syndicated
research study conducted by Keynote Systems (Nasdaq “KEYN”),
The Internet Performance Authority®, provides a
competitive benchmarking of leading retail Web sites.
The Keynote studies are performed regularly allowing
for key industries to be tracked over time from an
online customer experience standpoint. The next Keynote
study covering the online retail industry will be issued
in July 2005.
The Best Retail Web Sites
According to the current study, the Amazon.com,
Barnes & Noble
and Circuit City Web sites provide the best online
shopping experience for consumers. The rankings are
based on research with 2,000 customers as they interacted
with leading retail Web sites. In addition to traditional
opinion data, Keynote’s proprietary research
technology collects detailed qualitative and behavioral
data as these customers performed tasks at each site.
The sites topping the Keynote Customer Experience Rankings
performed best, in aggregate, across all 250+ measured
metrics and the indices compiled from these metrics.
Keynote Customer
Experience Rankings
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1
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Amazon.com |
2
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Barnes & Noble |
3
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Circuit City |
4
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eBay |
5
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Lands’ End |
The Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Best Buy, Circuit
City, eBay, Eddie Bauer, Froogle, Gap, L.L. Bean, Lands’ End,
Macy’s, Nordstrom, Office Depot, Sears, Staples,
Target, Wal-Mart and Yahoo! Shopping sites were among
those evaluated as part of the study.
Consumers Getting Savvy About Online Shopping
The study also indicated that customers have become
increasingly savvy when it comes to online shopping,
and that their expectations are increasingly set
by what they experience at other retail sites across
the Web.
“It is becoming increasingly imperative for
retailers to provide a strongly positive online shopping
experience,” said Dr. Bonny Brown, director of
research and public services at Keynote. “Our
research shows that the sites that perform best in
customer experience have a significant advantage in
driving online sales.”
In fact, Keynote found a direct correlation between
the customer experience online and purchase impact
rates on retail Web sites, as measured by the Keynote
Purchase Impact Index. The top-ranked retailers in
terms of customer experience performed significantly
better than all other retailers evaluated; and that
performance paid off with consumers expressing more
likelihood to purchase products from those sites and
to return to those sites again in the future.
Specialty Apparel Retailers Provide Best Customer
Experience
In general, specialty apparel retailers provided the
best online customer experience of all retail verticals,
and had the best conversion rates as compared to all
other traditional retail categories. Their success
was based on the strong visual appeal of their sites,
their product content and the depth of their site functionality.
“The specialty apparel retailers do an excellent
job of creating a personal, customer-focused online
shopping experience,” said Brown.
Those companies with an extensive history of catalog
selling, including L.L Bean and Land’s End, were
among the best performing apparel sites, and were joined
by the Gap in the top-tier of apparel retailers online.
Most traditional department store retailers did not
score as well in terms of online customer experience.
The study also found that, aside from Amazon and eBay,
retailers that focused on one retail category (e.g.,
books, electronics, apparel) faired better with consumers
than department store retailers with multiple product
categories.
Category Competitions Intensify
The most closely competitive retail category is among
office supply retailers, where Staples and Office
Depot are not only among the leading retailers in
terms of percentage of their overall sales from the
online channel (exceeding 15% of sales according
to Internet Retailer), but the companies are also
extremely closely matched in terms of customer experience.
The competitors performed equally well in the Keynote
CE Rankings.
In contrast, in the electronics category, there was
a significant gap between leading competitors with
Circuit City outperforming its competitors. Consumers
ranked Circuit City as better organized for browsing,
providing better search capabilities and customer support.
Again, Circuit City’s strong customer experience
ranking directly correlated with better conversion
and purchase impact rankings than its competitors.
What Consumers Want: Best of the Web
“It is critical for retailers to look at their
competition and learn from the leaders,” said
Dr. Brown. “Consumers
have become very savvy about shopping online. They
know what they want and they reward sites that provide
it with increased business.”
To provide a picture of what consumers want from the
ideal retail website, Keynote compiled a list of the
retailers that performed best in leading Web site attributes:
Best of the
Web Keynote Evaluation
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Check
Out Process |
Amazon |
Product Research/Browsing |
eBay |
Search Engine |
Barnes & Noble |
Online Help & Support |
Nordstrom |
In-Store Pick-Up |
Circuit City |
The entire report,
Keynote Customer Experience (CE) Rankings for the Online
Retail Industry, is a large scale competitive benchmarking
study of the online retail industry containing hundreds
of additional data points and a detailed analysis of
the findings. For information about purchasing the
full report, visit http://www.keynote.com/syndicated.html.
Keynote Customer Experience Research
Keynote is the leading provider of customer experience
research services, offering both syndicated and custom
research examining consumer behavior on the Web.
Keynote’s research provides critical business
insight into online customer experiences, industry
trends and competitive Web strategies for a variety
of vertical industries. In addition to traditional
opinion data, Keynote’s proprietary research
technology and access to a panel of 160,000+ consumers
allows for the collection of detailed qualitative
and behavioral data that inform its reports.
Keynote’s syndicated research includes two distinct
types of reports: the Keynote Customer Experience (CE)
Rankings, which provide competitive benchmarking and
rankings of the leading Web sites in a specific industry;
and Open Web Research (OWR), which takes a broader
look at the customer’s experience across the
entire Web when performing specific tasks, such as
booking business travel.
Keynote CE (CE) Rankings are available for a number
of industries including the retail, banking and credit
card industries, as well as several travel verticals,
including the lodging, cruise and rental car industries.
The Keynote CE Rankings are the successor to the Keynote
CE Rankings following Keynote’s acquisition of
Keynote in September 2004.
To learn more about Keynote’s syndicated research
offerings and for a list of the various vertical industry
reports that are available, visit: http://www.keynote.com/solutions/cem_syndicated_research.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 and marketing departments and
16,000 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
60 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 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. © 2005 Keynote Systems, Inc.
Editorial Contacts:
Dan Berkowitz, Keynote, (650)
403-3305, dberkowitz@keynote.com
Dan Cahill, Roaring PR (for Keynote), (415) 552-3999,
dcahill@roaringcommunications.com
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