Web site consistency improves in June

Web site consistency was on the uptick among big web retailers in June, with 20 merchants achieving a consistency rating of “excellent,” according to Gomez Inc.

Top 500 Guide

In June, 15 retailers received a rating of “good,” 12 got “fair” and three received “poor.”

The consistency ratings take into account differences in the speed of web page delivery across multiple visits and how often a retail site is unavailable because of downtime. The variability of response time and the number of minutes out are combined to create each retailer’s consistency rating, Gomez explains.

In April, the top 50 retail web sites had an average site availability rate of 96.62% and an overall consistency average of “good.”

Top 50 Web Site Performance Index: Consistency June 01 , 2007 - June 30 , 2007 Retailer Consistency Rating Consistency (seconds) Availability (%) Quixtar Excellent 13.31 97.88 Office Depot Excellent 14.47 98.92 Zappos Excellent 15.56 97.66 Dell Excellent 15.49 98.33 Neiman Marcus Excellent 15.49 97.92 Peapod Excellent 16.61 99.04 J. C. Penney Excellent 16.45 97.32 PC Connection Excellent 15.71 98.06 Eddie Bauer Excellent 15.94 99.21 Macys Store Excellent 15.87 97.18 Office Max Excellent 15.72 99.09 Avon Shopping Excellent 15.89 99.12 Footlocker Excellent 16.03 97.97 Sears Excellent 18.06 98.46 HSN Excellent 17.05 98.00 Nordstrom Excellent 17.09 97.91 Gateway Excellent 16.78 98.71 Staples Excellent 17.60 97.14 Cabelas Excellent 18.15 96.99 CDW Excellent 18.71 97.57 L. L. Bean Good 18.77 98.43 Williams-Sonoma Good 19.06 97.23 Drugstore Good 19.22 98.21 Barnes and Noble Good 19.60 97.22 Netflix Good 19.25 98.04 1-800 Flowers Good 19.03 97.22 Victoria Secret Good 19.69 96.44 Benchmark Average Good 19.24 96.62 Scholastic Good 19.92 97.08 Overstock Good 20.23 98.19 Chadwicks. Good 19.63 89.50 Circuit City Home Good 20.21 96.61 HP Shopping Good 20.57 96.74 Costco Good 20.23 98.34 CompUSA Good 20.25 97.81 FTD Good 22.46 97.16 The Home Depot Fair 21.56 95.79 Newegg Fair 21.62 96.39 Musicians Friend Fair 21.12 95.24 Tiger Direct Fair 21.77 97.22 Buy.com Fair 21.71 95.65 QVC Fair 21.80 95.16 Wal-Mart Fair 21.94 96.14 Amazon Fair 22.23 96.05 Oriental Trading Fair 22.47 94.41 Toys R Us Fair 21.38 93.90 Sony Style Fair 24.24 94.59 Target Fair 23.20 93.31 Best Buy Poor 25.39 87.44 Gap Poor 23.58 92.54 Apple Store Poor 23.90 90.39 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. Consistency Rating A qualitative representation of consistency ratings that are created with the lowest total score (Consistency + Availability) being normalized to 100. Above 98 = Excellent, above 95 = Good, above 85 = Fair, and below 85 = Poor. Consistency is the range between the high and low values of one standard deviation from response time. Availability is determined by the percentage of tests that fail to correctly load. Copyright© 2007 Gomez, Inc.