Big retailers deliver steady performance in August

The largest web retailers provided a consistent web performance in August, says Gomez Inc. 30 retailers achieved a consistency rating of excellent in July, compared to 12 with “good,” 6 with “fair” and two with “poor.” The largest web retailers provided a consistent web performance in August, says Gomez Inc.

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30 retailers achieved a consistency rating of excellent in July, compared to 12 with “good,” 6 with “fair” and two with “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.

Top 50 Web Site Consistency Benchmark June 1, 2006 - June 30, 2006 Retailer Consistency Rating Variability (Seconds) # of Errors Office Max Excellent 16.50 148 Zappos Excellent 18.51 180 Office Depot Excellent 18.76 194 J. C. Penney Excellent 22.53 194 Cabelas Excellent 19.55 198 Scholastic Excellent 20.93 211 Williams-Sonoma Excellent 20.74 212 Macys Store Excellent 21.08 222 Avon Shopping Excellent 20.69 248 Dell Excellent 19.92 253 Barnes and Noble Excellent 23.58 253 Nordstrom Excellent 20.93 259 Gateway Excellent 21.37 262 Drugstore Excellent 22.84 265 Eddie Bauer Excellent 23.48 270 HSN Excellent 20.56 273 CompUSA Excellent 22.30 273 Quixtar Excellent 20.35 288 Staples Excellent 21.01 298 Footlocker Excellent 19.70 316 HP Shopping Excellent 18.22 326 L. L. Bean Excellent 22.39 323 Chadwicks Excellent 22.40 331 Victoria Secret Excellent 25.25 358 FTD Excellent 25.76 373 Neiman Marcus Excellent 21.36 380 Netflix Excellent 19.11 396 Amazon Excellent 26.25 417 1-800 Flowers Excellent 25.74 442 CDW Excellent 22.86 456 Wal-Mart Good 26.04 481 Peapod Good 23.90 496 Costco Good 26.42 509 Sears Good 28.55 531 Apple Store Good 29.99 569 Musicians Friend Good 29.17 600 Benchmark Average Good 25.37 616 PC Connection Good 26.85 661 QVC Good 29.93 680 Overstock Good 29.76 746 Oriental Trading Good 29.76 811 Circuit City Good 30.64 832 Buy.com Good 30.72 874 The Home Depot Fair 29.94 1,083 Newegg Fair 31.88 1,158 Tiger Direct Fair 31.82 1,260 Toys R Us Fair 31.95 1,470 Target Fair 28.67 1,803 Best Buy Fair 33.32 1,880 Gap Poor 31.95 2,665 Sony Style Poor 29.77 3,083 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.