The first returns are in: Online delivery is only 55% on time, Keynote says
On-time delivery of goods ordered from retail web sites is averaging 55% so far this holiday shopping season, reports Keynote Systems Inc.’s first Keynote Holiday 2001 Fulfillment Report, released today.
The leading online retailer in delivery so far is TowerRecords.com, Keynote says. Tower Records told customers orders would ship within seven days; they usually shipped within a day, Keynote says. And Tower Records exceeded its delivery expectations by 68%, promising that orders would be delivered in 11.33 days, but actually delivering them in 3.64, Keynote reports.
“This metric is generally considered the most relevant to shoppers - `Order-to-Ship` is important to e-retailers, but it`s `Time-to-Receipt` that sells shoppers,” Keynote says.
As for living up to promises as to when orders would be shipped, performance is even worse. The average in that measurement is 32%, meaning that most items that online retailers promised would be shipped by a certain date were not shipped by that time.
The most disappointing retailer—which Keynote did not identify other than as a major toy retailer—promised that orders would, on average, ship in 1.32 days, when the orders actually took almost four days.
In speed and availability, Keynote reported that retail sites averaged 2.11 seconds to download the home page and were available 98.5% of the time.
Keynote is monitoring dozens of leading e-retail sites this holiday season to measure performance. It reports on online customers` shopping experience from the time they try to access a retail web site, through the time it takes to conduct a transaction such as placing an online order, to the time it takes to receive orders.
Keynote reported today:
Fulfillment
Tower Records, eBags.com, SmarterKids.com, Jjill.com and Amazon.com have the best fulfillment records for on-time delivery performance so far. All have exceeded their stated delivery dates for orders placed since Oct. 29 by more than 56%, and have exceeded the 55% average for on-time delivery performance.
Keynote reported that for Thanksgiving fulfillment promises, Williams-Sonoma was on time for only 17% of last-minute orders. Cooking.com delivered 100% orders on time. Keynote tested whether Williams-Sonoma and Cooking.com were able to deliver orders made by their stated "Thanksgiving Delivery Guarantee" deadlines. Both sites guaranteed that any orders made by noon PST on Tuesday, Nov 21, using next-day shipping, would be delivered to shoppers on Wednesday, in time for Thanksgiving.
So far this holiday season, the fulfillment performance of the average retailer has slowed by about half a day compared to last year, while the slowest retailer has improved and the fastest retailers` performance has remained about the same, Keynote says.
Finding items
Keynote measured the time it takes to search for an item of apparel. Fastest was JCPenney.com, where it took a customer 3.64 seconds on average to drill through three pages to find the target of a search. The same transaction at Pacific Sunwear, which also was three pages, took 13.69 seconds, the slowest. Other results: Talbot`s, five pages, 9.64 seconds; Victoria`s Secret, six pages, 12.85 seconds.
Web site accessibility, availability
Victoria`s Secret, Gap, Buy.com, Outpost, J.C. Penney`s and REI are the fastest sites for overall performance since October 29, all clocking home page downloads in under 1 second, Keynote reports.
The fastest sites:
- Victorias Secret (0.44 seconds)
- Gap (0.47 seconds)
- Buy.com (0.53 seconds)
- REI (0.91 seconds)
- FedEx (0.93 seconds)
- Outpost (0.93 seconds)
- Land`s End (0.99 seconds)
The slowest:
- Saks Fifth Avenue (4.06 seconds)
- Target (4.22 seconds)
- Bluelight.com (4.39 seconds)
- Best Prices (4.41 seconds)
- Urban Outfitters (6.29 seconds)
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