Zappos.com steps up with the best availability rating

Zappos.com posted the best rating in the Gomez Inc. high broadband availability tests for October. Web shoppers could access the shoe and apparel retailer’s site 98.55% of the time last month.

The average availability for the top 50 retailers in October was 92.33% for high broadband, 84.92% for low broadband and 53.04% for dial-up, Gomez says. Rounding out the top five results for high broadband availability were CircuitCity.com (98.39%), Newegg.com (98.27%), TigerDirect.com (98.21%) and Chadwicks.com (98.20).

Zappos.com, which is now a part of Amazon.com Inc., also had the most consistent low broadband availability at 95.08%. Dell.com had the most consistent dial-up availability at 78.46%.

How big retailers measure up on availability Retailer High Broadband (%) Low Broadband (%) Dial Up (%) Zappos.com 98.55 95.08 75.26 CircuitCity.com 98.39 93.57 56.34 Newegg.com 98.27 93.86 67.82 TigerDirect.com 98.21 93.39 63.47 Chadwicks.com 98.20 93.30 72.54 AmwayGlobal.com 97.94 93.83 74.25 CompUSA.com 97.78 92.81 58.49 Williams-Sonoma.com 97.76 91.96 65.35 Scholastic.com 97.74 93.17 69.12 HPShopping.com 97.66 89.48 47.53 OfficeMax.com 97.50 93.23 69.63 Macys.com 97.50 92.66 63.42 Amazon.com 97.48 93.02 72.56 Dell.com 97.45 93.13 78.46 QVC.com 97.43 92.41 63.20 Staples.com 97.41 93.83 77.27 Avon.com 97.38 89.40 47.02 JCPenney.com 97.25 92.63 68.29 ColdwaterCreek.com 97.25 91.56 64.93 Drugstore.com 97.24 91.80 57.40 OfficeDepot.com 97.19 92.94 66.33 CDW.com 97.18 92.14 75.22 Costco.com 96.83 90.36 55.37 VictoriasSecret.com 96.74 88.09 41.15 Walmart.com 96.73 91.84 66.27 HomeDepot.com 96.50 91.18 54.69 HSN.com 96.44 89.97 61.19 Saks.com 96.35 89.04 57.45 Toysrus.com 96.30 84.24 28.01 MusiciansFriend.com 96.29 91.09 73.50 Peapod.com 96.29 89.40 61.51 BarnesandNoble.com 96.13 82.41 21.16 Gap.com 96.10 83.35 20.54 1800Flowers.com 95.59 83.88 40.51 Netflix.com 95.01 89.68 54.58 NeimanMarcus.com 93.28 84.70 38.65 SonyStyle.com 91.76 81.57 26.87 Sears.com 89.24 79.42 40.39 Buy.com 86.40 74.93 33.44 Apple.com 83.52 80.39 51.18 Nordstrom.com 82.82 70.36 40.68 LLBean.com 81.25 68.49 34.09 Target.com 78.83 67.92 38.31 OrientalTrading.com 72.67 61.62 26.50 BlueNile.com 68.59 58.44 42.84 Overstock.com 68.01 57.92 40.46 FootLocker.com 67.71 55.06 21.17 BestBuy.com 67.51 51.48 21.65 Benchmark Average 92.33 84.92 53.04 All data for this report is collected by the Gomez Last Mile network, 30 times an hour from Dial Up, Low and High Broadband users across the United States, 24 hours a day except between 3AM to 6AM EDT. Availability is determined by the percentage of tests that fail to correctly load. To see how all of the top 50 sites in the Gomez performance index compare on availability, click here.