Eddie Bauer tops Keynote’s e-commerce index in transaction response time

Eddie Bauer`s web site topped an index of 10 leading retail sites in terms of transaction speed for a two-week period at the end of July and beginning of August, according to data released this week by Keynote Systems at teh eTail 2003 conference in Boston. The data, from Keynote’s recently launched Consumer E-Commerce Transaction Index, tracks the response time and success rate for executing a typical six-page online retail transaction on 10 top sites indexed.

Eddie Bauer’s average time to execute the transaction averaged 7.18 seconds for the week of July 28 and 7.09 seconds the week of August 4. Amazon was in the number two spot with transaction times for the same weeks averaging 11.07 and 11.59 seconds, respectively. Office Depot’s web site came in third with transaction times for the two weeks averaging 12.08 seconds and 12.18 seconds. The average time required to complete a transaction across all the sites in the index was 14.59 seconds the first week and 14.87 seconds the following week.

The Keynote index also tracked availability, defined as the success rate for completing the entire 6-step transaction, which consisted of accessing the home page, searching for a product, viewing the product, adding the product to a shopping cart, proceeding to checkout, and logging into an account for purchase. The web site of Staples topped the other sites in terms of availability the week of July 28, with 100% availability; followed by the web sites of Sears, at 99.64% and Eddie Bauer at 99.54%. For the week of August 4, the web site of J.C. Penney led at 99.95%, followed by Eddie Bauer at 99.46% and Staples at 99.44%. The index average for availability across all 10 sites was 96.69% for the week of July 28 and 96.21% the following week.

The 10 companies whose web sites comprise the index are Amazon, Best Buy, Eddie Bauer, J.C. Penney, Office Depot, Office Max, Sears, Staples, Target and Wal-Mart.