December was a most excellent month for web site consistency

Web site consistency improved among major web retailers in December with 23 merchants achieving a consistency rating of “excellent,” according to Gomez Inc. The top 50 retail web sites had an average site availability rate of 98.55%

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In December, 17 retailers received a rating of “good,” eight got “fair” and one 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 December, the top 50 retail web sites had an average site availability rate of 98.55% and an overall consistency average of “good.”

Top 50 Web Site Performance Index: Consistency December 01 , 2007 - December 31 , 2007 Retailer Consistency Rating Consistency (seconds) Availability (%) Scholastic Excellent 8.48 99.27 Dell Excellent 10.65 99.14 Zappos Excellent 10.79 99.50 J. C. Penney Excellent 11.13 99.34 PC Connection Excellent 10.15 99.23 Victorias Secret Excellent 13.57 99.09 Musicians Friend Excellent 13.96 99.02 Macys Store Excellent 11.41 99.30 Office Depot Excellent 11.26 98.13 L. L. Bean Excellent 14.49 99.12 Saks Fifth Avenue Excellent 11.32 99.42 Overstock Excellent 11.93 98.57 Chadwicks Excellent 12.60 99.43 Footlocker Excellent 13.56 99.10 The Home Depot Excellent 13.92 99.06 Nordstrom Excellent 11.87 98.96 Sony Style Excellent 15.64 98.01 HSN Excellent 13.72 98.63 Circuit City Home Excellent 15.80 98.31 Netflix Excellent 11.93 98.92 Wal-Mart Excellent 16.36 98.65 Coldwater Creek Excellent 10.93 99.32 Avon Shopping Excellent 12.58 99.15 Sears Excellent 14.77 98.60 Costco Good 15.11 99.06 Williams-Sonoma Good 13.62 99.19 FTD Good 14.88 98.98 Staples Good 15.29 98.98 Benchmark Average Good 14.29 98.55 Quixtar Good 14.64 98.70 Tiger Direct Good 15.98 98.64 Blue Nile Good 12.28 98.78 1-800 Flowers Good 16.19 97.75 Barnes & Noble Good 15.31 98.85 Buy.com Good 15.87 98.72 HP Shopping Good 14.41 98.45 Newegg Good 16.19 98.48 Amazon Good 16.49 98.24 QVC Good 17.20 97.50 Drugstore Good 15.25 98.33 Best Buy Good 17.08 97.68 Toys R Us Good 17.55 97.58 Neiman Marcus Fair 11.56 99.37 Target Fair 17.01 97.93 OfficeMax Fair 18.27 98.26 Peapod Fair 12.68 98.91 Oriental Trading Fair 18.48 97.07 CDW Fair 16.86 96.44 Gap Fair 19.44 97.02 CompUSA Fair 15.31 98.86 Apple Store Poor 18.97 94.35 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© 2008 Gomez, Inc.