Slight increase in response, decrease in success at retail sites in August

IRCE 2008 Conference Multi-Media CD-ROM

The August Gomez Performance Index for E-Retailers finds little change at the top positions for both response time and availability categories. The benchmarked average for response time for e-retail transactions was 22.18 seconds and the average availability measure was 96.72%. As e-retailers rise or fall in their rankings each month, indications of performance impacting events can be seen.

Response Time Summary
The benchmarked average response time for retail transactions saw an increase that pushed response times to more than 2 seconds slower than in July (20.16 seconds). Most of the retailers maintained their rankings from the previous month, but two retailers seem to have made site changes that have significantly slowed their sites’ response times and impacted the benchmarked average. Most retailers saw a minor increase, which may indicate a heavier shopping load over the month.

Success Rate Summary
Success rates for August showed a slight decline over July’s benchmarked average (from 97.44% to 96.72% availability). Many sites, however, greatly improved their availability.

Many of the retailers below the benchmarked average for availability have been having issues with site changes. In addition, several of the sites have shown to be having trouble with their DNS entries, their global load balancing solutions, or just have very content heavy sites (having objects larger than 1 megabyte).

Most noteworthy was a decision made by Gap Inc. made to completely turn off its online store in the middle of August as it prepared for the fall shopping season.

Retail GPI Benchmark August 1, 2005 - August 31, 2005 Response Time Rating Rank Site Response Time (sec) 1 Office Depot 6.71 2 J C Penney 14.62 3 Walmart 15.50 4 Best Buy 15.88 5 Target 16.69 6 Amazon 17.05 7 Staples 18.55 8 Sears 19.11 9 CDW 21.63 10 Lands End 22.13   Benchmark Average 22.18 11 Office Max 26.42 12 HP 32.87 13 Dell 38.33 14 Sony 45.02 o Gap Online   -- Success Rate Rating Rank Site Success Rate (%) 1 Office Max 98.98 2 CDW 98.92 3 Office Depot 98.88 4 Walmart 98.51 5 Amazon 98.21 6 Sony 97.41 7 Target 97.09 8 J C Penney 96.81 9 Sears 96.79   Benchmark Average 96.72 10 Best Buy 96.61 11 Lands End 96.45 12 HP 95.64 13 Staples 92.11 14 Dell 91.69 o Gap Online   -- Copyright© 2005 Gomez, Inc.