Top retail web sites only rate an average of “fair” for December

Web site consistency was far from perfect for the web’s 50 largest retailers in December.

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In December, only 10 retailers achieved a consistency rating of excellent, compared to 19 with “good,” 11 with “fair” and 10 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.

In December, the top 50 retail web sites had an average site availability rate of 96.60% and an overall consistency average of only “fair.”

Top 50 Web Site Consistency Benchmark December 1, 2006 - December 31, 2006 Retailer Consistency Rating Variability (Seconds) # of Errors Quixtar Excellent 17.40 98.82 Dell Excellent 17.02 98.66 Zappos Excellent 17.42 99.45 Office Depot Excellent 17.94 99.08 Office Max Excellent 17.53 99.09 J. C. Penney Excellent 18.98 99.04 Sears Excellent 19.63 98.49 HP Shopping Excellent 18.93 98.13 Peapod Excellent 20.99 98.16 Staples Excellent 19.68 98.53 Nordstrom Good 20.65 98.55 Gateway Good 20.57 98.55 CDW Good 21.10 98.36 Macys Store Good 21.41 98.37 HSN Good 21.76 98.39 Eddie Bauer Good 21.52 98.60 Barnes and Noble Good 21.60 98.76 Avon Shopping Good 21.62 98.72 Neiman Marcus Good 21.39 98.84 L. L. Bean Good 21.73 98.32 Cabelas Good 21.74 98.77 Drugstore Good 22.57 98.31 Footlocker Good 22.41 98.69 Scholastic Good 23.98 98.63 Netflix Good 23.36 97.49 Victoria Secret Good 23.91 98.24 Williams-Sonoma Good 24.06 98.00 Overstock Good 24.38 97.55 CompUSA Good 23.72 98.32 Benchmark Average Fair 23.79 96.60 PC Connection Fair 23.36 97.34 Costco Fair 23.90 98.04 1-800 Flowers Fair 24.78 97.74 Newegg Fair 25.77 97.14 Circuit City Fair 26.50 97.44 FTD Fair 27.20 97.62 QVC Fair 27.35 97.21 Buy.com Fair 27.98 95.76 Apple Store Fair 27.70 97.08 Amazon Fair 27.90 96.00 Sony Style Fair 20.54 72.69 Chadwicks Poor 29.32 95.48 The Home Depot Poor 28.99 94.02 Oriental Trading Poor 29.40 94.27 Tiger Direct Poor 28.95 94.56 Toys R Us Poor 28.44 92.97 Musicians Friend Poor 30.42 93.83 Target Poor 29.63 90.55 Gap Poor 29.81 90.11 Wal-Mart Poor 30.86 92.78 Best Buy Poor 31.86 90.35 Copyright © 2007 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.