Web site consistency improves in April

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

In April, 20 retailers received a rating of “good,” 10 got “fair” and none received “poor.”

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.

In April, the top 50 retail web sites had an average site availability rate of 97.44% and an overall consistency average of “good.”

Top 50 Web Site Performance Index: Consistency April 01 , 2007 - April 30 , 2007 Retailer Consistency Rating Consistency (seconds) Availability (%) Office Depot Excellent 14.08 99.14 Eddie Bauer Excellent 14.29 99.26 J. C. Penney Excellent 14.78 98.69 Office Max Excellent 14.24 98.75 Zappos Excellent 14.83 98.81 Dell Excellent 15.12 98.74 Quixtar Excellent 15.20 98.46 Avon Shopping Excellent 15.03 98.92 Gateway Excellent 15.50 98.80 Neiman Marcus Excellent 15.10 98.45 Sears Excellent 16.71 98.69 PC Connection Excellent 15.11 98.74 Staples Excellent 16.17 98.36 Peapod Excellent 17.36 98.68 Macys Store Excellent 16.30 97.87 Footlocker Excellent 15.93 98.78 Nordstrom Excellent 17.53 98.49 Williams-Sonoma Excellent 17.37 98.33 L. L. Bean Excellent 17.60 98.58 Cabelas Excellent 17.54 98.21 Chadwicks Good 17.21 97.87 Netflix Good 17.52 98.04 CompUSA Good 18.32 98.57 HSN Good 18.52 97.81 CDW Good 18.25 98.18 Barnes and Noble Good 18.82 98.11 Scholastic Good 18.30 98.17 Benchmark Average Good 18.24 97.44 Circuit City Home Good 18.49 98.18 Musicians Friend Good 19.38 97.81 Drugstore Good 19.62 97.80 HP Shopping Good 19.15 97.35 Newegg Good 20.00 97.60 Overstock Good 20.83 97.74 Victoria Secret Good 19.18 97.01 Amazon Good 19.71 97.23 Costco Good 20.11 97.87 Buy.com Good 20.56 97.08 QVC Good 19.97 95.95 FTD Good 20.31 97.90 1-800 Flowers Fair 20.21 97.49 Tiger Direct Fair 20.84 96.32 Apple Store Fair 21.24 96.07 Toys R Us Fair 19.27 93.61 Oriental Trading Fair 21.04 94.96 The Home Depot Fair 21.70 95.65 Sony Style Fair 18.28 92.10 Wal-Mart Fair 21.23 95.46 Best Buy Fair 22.26 93.56 Target Fair 21.99 94.19 Gap Fair 23.89 93.60 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.