Top 50 retailers deliver consistency in September

Top 500 Guide

The largest web retailers provided a consistent web performance in September, says Gomez Inc. 31 retailers achieved a consistency rating of excellent in September, compared to 13 with “good,” and 6 with “fair.”

The consistency ratings take into account differences in the speed of web page delivery across multiple visits and the frequency 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.

Top 50 Web Site Consistency Benchmark September 1, 2006 - September 30, 2006 Retailer Consistency Rating Variability (Seconds) # of Errors Office Depot Excellent 19.43 167 Zappos Excellent 20.59 179 J. C. Penney Excellent 22.08 241 Gateway Excellent 21.85 249 Macys Store Excellent 21.85 253 Eddie Bauer Excellent 22.75 254 Dell Excellent 20.46 263 Office Max Excellent 16.06 283 Barnes and Noble Excellent 24.49 280 Quixtar Excellent 20.44 288 CompUSA Excellent 23.38 286 Drugstore Excellent 23.78 291 L. L. Bean Excellent 23.55 296 Avon Shopping Excellent 21.29 301 HP Shopping Excellent 19.25 312 Staples Excellent 21.84 314 Nordstrom Excellent 21.53 318 Cabelas Excellent 25.48 331 Williams-Sonoma Excellent 25.12 348 HSN Excellent 22.62 360 Neiman Marcus Excellent 21.85 372 Footlocker Excellent 20.28 388 1-800 Flowers Excellent 24.61 418 FTD Excellent 28.70 424 Scholastic Excellent 19.09 472 Netflix Excellent 23.26 471 Circuit City Excellent 27.06 484 Peapod Excellent 24.20 490 CDW Excellent 23.48 497 Apple Store Excellent 29.90 525 PC Connection Good 26.37 639 Costco Good 28.63 676 Sears Good 29.09 680 Wal-Mart Good 30.52 697 Benchmark Average Good 26.41 705 QVC Good 30.56 702 Victoria Secret Good 28.72 723 Overstock Good 30.16 749 Amazon Good 29.92 798 Musicians Friend Good 30.24 842 Buy.com Good 30.80 871 Chadwicks Good 27.62 890 Oriental Trading Good 30.43 911 Newegg Good 31.51 1,060 The Home Depot Fair 30.84 1,224 Toys R Us Fair 34.53 1,751 Best Buy Fair 33.36 1,840 Target Fair 31.97 2,130 Gap Fair 32.04 2,297 Sony Style Fair 33.48 2,789 Copyright © 2006 Gomez, Inc.                                       www.gomez.com Consistency = A qualitative representation of consistency ratings that are created with the lowest total score (Variability + Errors) being normalized to 100. Above 98 = Excellent, above 95 = Good, above 85 = Fair, and below 85 = Poor. Variability = The range between the high and low values of one standard deviation from response time. # of Errors = Test failures or timeouts caused by site unavailability.