Big retailers deliver better site consistency in June

June was a good month for web site consistency for the largest online retailers, says Gomez Inc.

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Gomez Inc. compared the web’s 50 largest retailers on consistency and variability and assigned each retailer a specific rating. The top 10 retailers receiving a rating of “excellent” were: Zappos, OfficeMax, Scholastic, FTD, Cabela’s, J.C. Penney, Drugstore.com, Office Depot, Eddie Bauer and Dell. A total of 33 top 50 retailers received a rating of excellent for June.

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.

The variability of response time is key and the amount of time a site is accessible is crucial to achieving a top ranking, Gomez says. Among the retailers receiving a rating of “good” for their performance in June were: CDW, Musician’s Friend, Buy.com, Overstock, Oriental Trading, The Home Depot, Costco, Tiger Direct and Gap.

Top 50 Web Site Consistency Benchmark June 1, 2006 - June 30, 2006 Retailer Consistency Rating Variability (Seconds) # of Errors Zappos Excellent 13.82 137 Office Max Excellent 16.96 161 Scholastic Excellent 17.02 179 FTD Excellent 17.22 190 Cabelas Excellent 17.84 192 J. C. Penney Excellent 20.29 196 Drugstore Excellent 20.90 199 Office Depot Excellent 20.97 203 Eddie Bauer Excellent 19.12 209 Dell Excellent 10.92 223 Amazon Excellent 22.40 214 Quixtar Excellent 18.34 227 L. L. Bean Excellent 19.22 229 Barnes and Noble Excellent 20.84 232 Williams-Sonoma Excellent 19.35 235 Macys Store Excellent 18.77 238 Wal-Mart Excellent 21.60 253 HSN Excellent 20.70 269 Neiman Marcus Excellent 20.39 278 Gateway Excellent 20.03 279 Footlocker Excellent 16.15 289 Toys R Us Excellent 19.81 293 HP Shopping Excellent 18.53 299 QVC Excellent 24.88 296 Staples Excellent 20.16 318 Netflix Excellent 17.18 322 Chadwicks Excellent 24.66 327 Victoria Secret Excellent 21.17 336 Avon Shopping Excellent 19.49 358 Circuit City Excellent 23.07 379 Apple Store Excellent 26.47 383 Nordstrom Excellent 20.68 396 CompUSA Excellent 19.46 407 Benchmark Average Excellent 22.41 407 PC Connection Excellent 22.44 410 1-800 Flowers Excellent 23.30 412 Peapod Excellent 21.82 417 Sears Excellent 25.37 419 CDW Good 22.58 457 Musicians Friend Good 25.60 476 Buy.com Good 27.23 519 Overstock Good 27.12 539 Oriental Trading Good 26.05 554 The Home Depot Good 26.28 573 Costco Good 24.66 614 Tiger Direct Good 28.91 784 Gap Good 27.05 796 Best Buy Fair 27.54 896 Newegg Fair 28.03 899 Sony Style Fair 31.85 1,011 Target Fair 23.47 1,807 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.